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THE LAWYER 

THE STATESMAN AND 

THE SOLDIER 



BY 

GEORGE S. BOUTWELL 



-^x 



3 /^ 

We value a man by the measure of his 
fM ""^ strength at the place where he is strongest. 



NEW YORK 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1887 



'^< 






Copyright, 1887, 
By GEORGE S. BOUTWELL. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The preparation of these sketches is due to 
the circumstance that it is my fortune to have 
had the acquaintance of the persons to whom 
the sketches relate. These pages may show the 
marks of friendship rather than the skill of the 
biographer or the research of the historian. I 
have written in obedience to the rule or maxim 
that we value a man by the measure of his 
strength at the place where he is strongest. 
Human errors and weaknesses, from which none 
of us are exempt, can not be set off properly 
against great thoughts expressed or great acts 
performed. Errors and weaknesses mar the man, 
but they can not qualify the greatness achieved. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

RuFUS Choate, the Lawyer . . . . i 

Daniel Webster, the Statesman . . .44 

President Lincoln, the Statesman and Liberator 90 
General Grant, the Soldier and Statesman . 150 



THE LAWYER, THE STATESMAN, 
AND THE SOLDIER. 



RUFUS CHOATE. 

If in imagination we can command the pres- 
ence of a man only less than six feet in height, with 
a full, deep breast, high and unseemly shoulders, 
hips and legs slender and in appearance weak, arms 
long, hands and feet large and ill-formed, a head 
broad, chaste, symmetrical, covered with a luxu- 
riant suit of black, glossy, wavy hair, a face intel- 
lectually handsome and equally attractive to men 
and to women, a complexion dark and bronzed as 
becomes the natives of the tropical isles of the East, 
a beard scanty and vagrant, mouth and nose large, 
lips thin and long, an eye black, gentle and winning 
in repose, but brilliant, commanding, and persuasive 
in moments of excitement — we shall have thus and 
now created an imperfect picture of Rufus Choate 
as he presented himself to his contemporaries when 
his physical qualities had not been wasted by dis- 
ease nor impaired by age. 

And if from this sketch we are in doubt whether 



2 RUFUS CHOATE 

the subject of it was an attractive person, we should 
realize that his manners and ways were as gentle as 
the manners and ways of the best bred woman, that 
to the young he was always kind and often affec- 
tionate, to the aged respectful, and that to those 
in authority he was ever deferential without being 
or appearing to be a sycophant. 

And to these charms of person and benignity of 
manners we are to superadd a voice that in conver- 
sation, debate, or oration was copious, command- 
ing, sonorous, and emotional, responding like music 
to every change of thought, and, in its variety of 
tone and sweep of accent and emphasis, touching 
and influencing not only the sentiments and feel- 
ings but even the opinions and judgments of men. 
His vocabulary knew no limits except those set 
by the language itself ; and such was his facility in 
its use as to extort from the stern Chief-Justice of 
the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts the 
remark, when told that Webster's new dictionary 
contained many thousand additional words, " I beg 
of you not to let Choate hear of it ! " 

His gestures seemed extravagant often, but they 
were justified usually by the wonderful rhetoric 
which he commanded and so used that it was ac- 
cepted as the natural, the inevitable outflow of his 
mind. While he seldom made a plain statement of 
the exact truth either in conversation or in arg-u- 



THE LAWYER, 
m 



ent, he yet expressed the truth by a manifest 
exaggeration of the truth. 

When he offered wine to friends and omitted to 
join them, he said, - I keep a little wine in my 
house, but as for myself I doij't drink a glass once 
in a thousand years." Borrowing the language of 
the profession in regard to challenges of jurors, he 
said of a brother at the bar whose manners and 
ways were disagreeable, '' Some persons we hate for 
cause, but ^ * - we hate peremptorily." 

Upon his return from the Senate of the United 
States in 1842, standing in the doorway of a meet- 
ing-house then nearly a century old in a country 
town of Massachusetts, and speaking to the multi- 
tude within and without the building, in explana- 
tion and defense of the bankrupt law then recent- 
ly enacted under the lead of the Whig party, he 
emphasized and made attractive the restoration to 
active business of the body of bankrupts by the ex- 
clamation, - In an instant we created five hundred 
thousand full-grown, able-bodied men!" 

Mr. Choate's facility in the use of language, his 
urbanity of manner, and his ability to express con- 
tempt without wounding visibly the subject of it, 
were illustrated when he was closing an argument 
in behalf of a client who was seeking compensation 
for injury to his person, his horse, carriage, and 
larness. Mr. Choate discoursed of the injury to 



4 RUFUS CHOATE 

his client, to the horse, and to the carriage, and was 
about taking his seat, when his junior touched him 
and said, " You have omitted the harness." Though 
annoyed by the suggestion of so insignificant a 
matter, he turned to the jury and with his accus- 
tomed urbanity, said—" Ah, Mr. Foreman and gen- 
tlemen of the jury, the harness !— a safe, sound, 
substantial, serviceable (pausing and dropping his 
voice), second-hand harness," and sat down. 

Mr. Choate lived and labored under the influ- 
ence of that dainty and dangerous gift of nature 
which finds relief only in physical excesses or in 
unremitting intellectual work— a sensitive, nervous 
organization. He seldom indulged himself in amuse- 
ments and except when compelled by illness he had 
no relaxation from the toils of public and profes- 
sional life. 

When warned by an associate that his constant 
labors were imperiling his health, he said, '' I have 
no alternative but the insane asylum." 

Again, when asked how his constitution held out, 
he answered : '' That was gone long ago ; I am 
now living on the by-laws." 

In Mr. Choate's nature there was a singular 
mixture of timidity and professional courage. It is 
said that in consultation with his associates he was 
too often doubtful of success, but, when the excite- 
ment of the trial was on, there were no indications 



THE LAWYER. 



5 



of fear. His movements, tones, and arguments 
were those of an advocate accustomed to victory, 
and confident alike in his cause and in the su- 
premacy of his own powers. But his constitu- 
tional timidity appeared in his politics and in his 
political career. It was unfortunately conspicuous 
in his controversy in the Senate with Mr. Clay, and 
in his acceptance in 1856 of the candidacy of Mr. 
Buchanan, manifestly through fear of a rupture 
with the South. It can not be denied, however, 
that his speech at Lowell in that year is full of 
statesmanship mingled with solemn prophecies as 
to the consequences of the slavery agitation, if only 
we accept his thesis that it was better to endure 
slavery than to suffer the horrors of civil war. In 
his opinion then, Ave had only a choice of evils. He 
chose to endure those we had, rather than to fly to 
others he knew not of. Genius in oratory and ca- 
pacity in statesmanship are not often combined in 
the same person. 

Nor can it be asserted with confidence that 
any great orator was ever eminently successful in 
the practicaal ffairs of government. 

Cicero may have been an exception, but even 
his career is open to question in that respect. Cer- 
tainly the elder Pitt, Burke, Lamartine, Kossuth, 
and Castelar are instances of failure, and some of 
them are conspicuous examples. 



6 RUFUS CHOATE 

There is a rough side to government, and there 
must be a quality of harshness in the nature of 
those who administer governments successfully. 

Mr. Choate's courtesy was unfailing. He sub- 
mitted deferentially to the verdicts of juries and to 
the opinions of the bench. He avoided personal 
controversy with his brethren at the bar, and he 
treated witnesses upon the stand, whether friendly 
or hostile, with apparent kindly consideration. It 
was only in argument that witnesses felt the force 
and weight of his keen satire and persuasive logic. 
His presence of mind never failed, and his ready 
resources in the contests of the bar were not less 
remarkable than the brilliancy of his arguments. 

Perhaps no advocate ever received a heavier 
blow from a witness than fell upon INIr. Choate 
when managing the defense of a shipmaster who 
was charged with the crime of robbing and sinking 
his vessel in the waters of the Indian Ocean. The 
mate had become a witness for the Government. 
Robert Rantoul, Jr., was the prosecuting district 
attorney. The mate was a party to the crime, and 
it was the theory of his testimony to prove that the 
captain originated the scheme, and that the mate 
and his associates were persuaded by the captain 
to engage in the undertaking. In the cross-exami- 
nation Mr. Choate sought for the inducements and 
representations to which the mate had yielded. 



THE LA WYER. 7 

The answers of the mate were reluctantly given, 
and he evidently held something back. At last Mr. 
Choate laid his elbows upon the table, rested his 
head upon his hands, and with a persuasive manner 
and voice said, '' Now, my good fellow, will you 
not tell us what the captain said that induced you 
to engage in this business ? " The witness replied 
with nervous impetuosity, and said, " He told us 
there was a man in Boston named Choate who 
would get us clear, if the money were found in our 
boots ! " When the laughter and excitement had 
subsided, Mr. Choate, without change of voice or 
manner, said, *' Did my brother Rantoul tell you to 
say that?" The witness, for a moment, was con- 
founded by the address and personality of the ques- 
tion, and after some delay said, " No." Mr. Choate 
remarked, " We all knew he didn't, but why did 
you hesitate about that, as you have about every- 
thing you have told us to-day ? " The rencontre 
left a wound on Mr. Choate, but the mode of 
escape was as good as the circumstances of the 
case permitted. 

This incident in his career, and his successful 
defense of Albert J. Tirrell for the murder of Ma- 
ria Bickford, were the basis of the keen and almost 
cruel attack made by Wendell Phillips, in his ora- 
tion called " The Boston Idols." 

The idols were Webster, Everett, and Choate. 



8 RUFUS CHOATE 

In approaching Choate, he erected a pantheon, in 
which he put many of the great gods of jurispru- 
dence, and accompanied their names with stately 
encomiums. 

Among these were D'Agesseau, Romilly, and 
Mansfield. " Finally," said the orator, '' New Eng- 
land shrieks, ' Here is Choate, who made it safe to 
murder, and for whose health thieves asked before 
they began to steal ! ' " 

No greater tribute than this could be offered, 
either by friendly or hostile voice, to the learning, 
skill, and genius of an advocate ; but beneath the 
spoken word there lurks the suggestion that there 
are human powers so exalted and controUing that 
they ought not to be employed in defense of per- 
sons charged with crime. 

All crimes are primarily against the Govern- 
ment, whatever may be the personal circumstances 
attending their commission. 

The sufferers can in no case be their own aven- 
gers. In the pursuit and prosecution of criminals 
the resources of a state or of a nation are at the 
command of the agents of the Government. Those 
resources are always greater than the resources 
of the most opulent individual. The Government 
enacts the laws, creates the courts, ordains the 
mode of procedure, furnishes the juries from its 
body of citizens ; and, since the employment of Mr. 



THE LAWYER. 



9 



Webster to aid the Attorney-General of Massachu- 
setts in the prosecution of the Knapps for the mur- 
der of Joseph White, it has been thought not im- 
proper for Governments to retain eminent counsel 
and advocates to aid or even to lead in the trial 
of persons charged with crime. The advantages 
could not be greater if it were the maxim of Gov- 
ernments that, for every crime committed, some 
person should suffer a penalty. The ancient and 
wiser maxim, that it is better that ninety - nine 
guilty persons should escape than that one inno- 
cent person should suffer, assumes that it is a 
higher duty to protect the innocent than to punish 
the guilty. And this duty always rests upon the 
Government 

It is, therefore, a wise pubhc policy which pro- 
vides the means of defense for every person charged 
with crime ; and a healthy pubhc sentiment will in 
the end not only tolerate but it will support the ad- 
vocate who undertakes the defense, even though 
the accused for the moment may be enduring the 
weight of an adverse and intolerant public judg- 
ment. 

It is a pubhc misfortune, whose effects run with 
the ages, when great criminals even are brought to 
the bar and tried and condemned without the sup- 
port and aid of an able, vigorous, and persistent 
defense. And it should ever be borne in mind that. 



lO RUFUS C HO ATE 

in cases where the guilt of the party is beyond 
question, he is entitled to the benefit of every de- 
fense which the law authorizes ; and it should also 
be borne in mind that, if those means are denied to 
the guilty, the time will soon come when they will 
not be a shield to the innocent. 

The line of professional duty is clear. The at- 
torney is an officer of the court. He is to obey the 
law, and in his advice to chents he is always to di- 
rect them in the fine of obedience to the law. Oth- 
erwise, he becomes a participator in their guilt. 
Usually, however, the attorney is not consulted un- i 
til the law has been violated. The accused is then 
entitled to every advantage and privilege which 
the law allows. These the attorney and advocate 
are to find and to employ with whatever of ability 
they can command, and if in the end the ac- j 
cused is found not guilty, the law presumes him 
innocent ; but, whether so or not, the fault, if 
fault there be, is with the Government and its 
agents. 

Lord Brougham, in his defense of Queen Caro- 
line, went much further. He maintained the ex- 
treme, revolutionary doctrine that it was the duty 
of counsel to pursue the defense of clients even to 
the destruction of the Government itself. This po- ] 
sition, however, he quahfied subsequently by de- 
claring that he assumed it as a menace to the king, 



THE LA WYER. 1 1 

and for the purpose of staying the hand of the 
prosecutors. 

Mr. Choate's successful defense of Albert J. 
Tirrell was followed by severe criticisms, and the 
loss of public esteem among those whose narrow 
ethics could not comprehend the true relations of 
the Government to the individual members of 
society. Tirrell was a young man of irregular 
ways of life, and Maria Bickford was a young 
woman of great beauty and some celebrity. That 
Tirrell was her slayer there was no doubt. The 
defense was somnambulism on the part of Tirrell, 
and the habit was proved upon the testimony of 
his family and associates. The defense relied also 
on the absence of motive on the part of Tirrell. 

Beyond this the witnesses for the Government, 
who had knowledge of the facts occurring during 
the night of the murder, and in the house where 
the killing took place, were persons of ill repute. 
The jury found the prisoner not guilty. The 
public found him guilty, and the public made Mr. 
Choate responsible for the verdict of the jury. 
When Mr. Choate declined the defense of Pro- 
fessor Webster, charged with the murder of Dr. 
Parkman, his course was attributed to his dis- 
inclination to again encounter the popular odium. 
It is more probable, however, that Mr. Choate 
declined the defense because Professor Webster 



12 RUFUS C HO ATE 

was unwilling to rely upon the actual facts, and 
on which his crime would have been reduced 
from murder to manslaughter. 

Although Mr. Choate was destitute of many 
of the qualities of statesmanship, his views of 
public questions were those of a statesman. He 
was conservative in his opinions, a follower of 
Hamilton, and an associate and friend of Web- 
ster. If the Constitution of the country had been 
the work of his own hand, his devotion to it 
could not have been greater ; but he was terrified 
by the thought that it was a band of iron which 
might be broken but could never be changed. 
The civil war, which he dreaded, but lived not to 
see, wrought changes in the Constitution that he 
would have welcomed. 

Mr. Choate's last public service was in the Con- 
stitutional Convention of Massachusetts of 1853. 
In those days, in Massachusetts, we were blessed 
with an excellent sergeant-at-arms, who, through 
the agency of a boy blindfolded — a clairvoyant, no 
doubt — was able usually to so draw the numbers 
from a box as to secure a orQod seat for the leadinof 
men of all parties. Mr. Choate drew an end-seat, .' 
and it was my fortune to secure the next end-seat 
immediately behind him. For about three months 
we were thus associated. I enjoyed his con- 
versation, observed his ways, and listened to 



'I 



THE LAWYER. 1 3 

his speeches, which were, in fact, alwa3's ora- 
tions. 

During the months of May, June, and July, Mr. 
Choate attended to some professional business, pre- 
pared and delivered his Dartmouth eulogy upon 
Mr. Webster, and participated in the debates of the 
convention. Worthy of especial notice w^ere his 
speeches upon the judiciary and the representative 
system. The speech on the judiciary was deUv- 
ered on a hot day in July. During all his mature 
years Mr. Choate was subject to severe headaches, 
and they often followed or attended the excitement 
of public efforts. That day he provided himself 
with a bottle of bay-rum, with which he bathed his 
head frequently and profusely. His gesticulations 
were so vigorous that drops of bay-rum and per- 
spiration were thrown from his hair and bespat- 
tered his neighbors. His speeches were usually 
written, if the characters he employed could be 
called writing, inasmuch as they were illegible to 
ever}^ one but himself. In the delivery, however, 
he dealt only with the sheets which he took up and 
held, and laid down in succession, without appear- 
ing to read what was written. Probably a word 
suggested an entire sentence or even a paragraph, 
and thereupon his memory w-as quickened or his 
mind repeated the process of thought pursued 
when the sentence or paragraph was written. 



14 



RUFUS CHOATE 



When engaged in the trial of causes he usually 
ran two sets of notes. Upon one he minuted ques- 
tions or topics to be used in the cross-examination 
of witnesses, and upon the other he noted points or 
illustrations for his argument to the jury. 

Neither eloquence nor argument is exclusively 
of the word spoken. The tones, the gestures, the 
emphasis^ the accent, reveal the finer shades of 
meaning on the one side and enforce the argument 
on the other. Therefore, we can institute no com- 
parison between the orators that we have heard 
and the orators that we have not heard. In justice 
we can only compare with one another the orators 
that we have heard, and with one another the. 
orators that we have not heard. 

Mr. Choate was a student in the office of Will- 
iam Wirt, and for a year he Avas a listener to the 
arguments of William Pinckney in the Supreme 
Court of the United States. On those models he 
fashioned his career as an advocate, and on those 
models he so improved, I imagine, as, in the end, 
to defy rivalry and even comparison. But Mr. 
Choate's laurels were gathered in a field where 
there were many competitors both at the bar and 
upon the rostrum. His antagonists and competi- 
tors were Webster, Mason, Franklin Dexter, Hil- 
lard, Dana, Everett, Phillips, and, whether at the 
bar or upon the platform, he could have com- 



THE LAWYER, 1 5 

manded an audience at the expense of each and all 
of those gifted men. 

To these I may add, out of my own personal 
experience, the names of Henry Clay, J. McPher- 
son Berrien, Thomas Corwin, Abraham Lincoln, 
Georg-e Thompson, Louis Kossuth, as persons 
quite unequal to contest with Rufus Choate for 
supremacy in ability to interest, instruct, and con- 
trol a popular assembly. 

Of Mr. Choate it is to be said that his philoso- 
phy and his powers of imagination passed not be- 
yond the relations of men to men, and of men to 
things. Hence, we shall seek in vain for idealistic 
passages in his speeches and writings. We shall 
find nothing that can be compared with Webster's 
great passage in his eulogy on Jefferson and 
Adams : 

" A superior and commanding human intellect, 
when Heaven vouchsafes so rare a gift, is not a 
temporary flame burning brightly for a while and 
then expiring, giving place to returning darkness ; 
it is rather a spark of fervent heat as well as a radi- 
ant light, vvdth power to enkindle the common mass 
of human mind, so that when it glimmers in its 
own decay, and finally goes out in death, no night 
follows, but it leaves the world all light, all on fire, 
from the potent contact of its own spirit." 

Nor any passage which can be compared to 
Buckle's tribute to men of thousfht and science : 



l6 RUFUS CHOATE 

" The discoveries of great men never leave us. 
They are immortal. They contain those eternal 
truths that survive the shock of empires, outlive 
the struggles of rival creeds, and witness the decay 
of successive religions. All these have their differ- 
ent standards and their different measures — one 
set of opinions for one age and another set for an- 
other. They pass away like a dream. They are 
as the fabric of a vision which leaves not a rack 
behind. The discoveries of genius alone remain. 
To them we owe all that we now have. They are 
for all ages and all times. Never young and never 
old, they bear the seeds of their own life. They 
flow on in a perennial and undying stream. They 
are essentially cumulative, and, giving birth to the 
additions which they subsequently receive, they 
thus influence the most distant posterity, and after 
the lapse of centuries produce more effect than 
they could do even at the moment of their promul- 



It is a fortunate fact in the intellectual world 
that the varieties of taste, power, and genius are so 
many and distinguishing that comparisons elude us, 
while contrasts are obvious to the most careless 
observers.*"' Mr. Choate combined a rare subtilty of 
observation and ingenuity of argument, gilded by 
an affluent imagination found nowhere else but in 
the fields of romance, with a clear and incisive logic 
which charmed alike the rustic and the student, and 
compelled the assent of the critic and the judge. 



THE LAWYER. 



17 



If it be admitted that Mr. Choate has left no 
single passage that can be quoted by the side of the 
choice extracts from ancient and modern orations, 
it may nevertheless be claimed for him that his ar- 
guments and speeches are well sustained from first 
to last, and that the marks of rewriting and prun- 
ing are nowhere to be found. Such were his in- 
tellectual resources and such his mastery over his 
faculties that what he wrought was finished as he 
wrought. 

Therefore, whatever selections we may make 
from the speeches and orations of his maturer 
years will express his quality and power, remem- 
bering always that the effect of his personal ap- 
pearance, gestures, and electrical voice can never 
be comprehended by those who had not the for- 
tune to see and to hear him. 

In the Convention of 1853 a vigorous effort was 
made to change the tenure of the judicial office 
from a tenure of ''good behavior" to a term of 
years. This change Mr. Choate resisted, and the 
speech he then delivered presents him at his best 
in the field of statesmanship. 

His purpose he thus sets forth : 

" I go for that system, if I can find it or help to 
find it, which gives me the highest degree of assur- 
ance, taking man as he is, at his strongest and at 
his weakest, and in the average of the lot of hu- 



1 8 RUFUS CHOATE 

manity, that there shall be the best judge on every 
bench of justice in the Commonwealth, through its 
successive generations." 

In a speech of two hours' duration he dealt 
with the problem how to command and how to 
keep upon the bench such a judge as he thus de- 
scribed : 

•'" In the first place, he should be profoundly 
learned in all the learning of the law, and he must 
know how to use that learning. Will any one stand 
up here to deny this ? In this day, boastful, glori- 
ous for its advancing, popular, professional, scien- 
tific, and all education, will any one disgrace himself 
by doubting the necessity of deep and continued 
studies, and various and thorough attainments to 
the bench ? He is to know not merely the law which 
you make, and the Legislature makes, not constitu- 
tional and statute law alone, but that other ampler, 
that boundless jurisprudence, the common law, 
which the successive generations of the State have 
silently built up ; that old code of freedom which 
we brought with us in the Maj-flower and Ara- 
bella, but which, in the progress of centuries, we 
have ameliorated and enriched, and adapted wisely 
to the necessities of a busy, prosperous, and wealthy 
community — that he must know. 

"■ And where to find it ? In volumes which you 
must count by hundreds, by thousands ; filling 
libraries; exacting long labors — the labors of a 
lifetime, abstracted from business, from politics ; 



THE LAWYER. 19 

but assisted by taking part in an active judicial 
administration ; such labors as produced the wis- 
dom and won the fame of Parsons, and Marshall, 
and Kent, and Story, and Holt, and Mansfield. If 
your system of appointment and tenure does not 
present a motive, a help for such labors and such 
learning-, if it discourages, if it disparages them, in 
so far it is a failure. 

" In the next place, he must be a man not 
merely upright ; not merely honest and well-inten- 
tioned — this of course — but a man wdio will not 
respect persons in judgment. And does not every 
one here agree to this also ? Dismissing for a mo- 
ment all theories about the mode of appointing 
him, or the time for which he shall hold office, sure 
I am we all demand that, as far as human virtue, 
assisted by the best contrivances of human wis- 
dom, can attain to it, he shall not respect persons in 
judgment. He shall know nothing about the par- 
ties, everything about the case. He shall do ever}^- 
thing for justice, nothing for himself ; nothing for 
his friend, nothing for his patrons, nothing for his 
sovereign. 

'' If, on one side, is the executive powxr and the 
Legislature and the people — the sources of his hon- 
ors, the givers of his daily bread — and on the other 
an individual, nameless and odious, his eye is to see 
neither great nor small, attending only to the trepi- 
dations of the balance. If a law is passed by a 
unanimous Legislature, clamored for by the general 
voice of the public, and a cause is before him on it, 
in which the whole community is on one side and 



20 RUFUS C HO ATE 

an individual nameless or odious on the other, and 
he believes it to be against the Constitution, he 
must so declare it, or there is no judge. If Athens 
comes there to demand that the cup of hemlock be 
put to the lips of the wisest of men, and he believes 
that he has not cori-uptcd the youth, nor omitted to zvor- 
ship the gods of tJie city, nor introduced new divi^iities 
of his ozi'n, he must deliver him, although the thun- 
der light on the unterritied brow. 

*' And, finally, he must possess the perfect confi- 
dence of the community, that he bear not the sword 
in vain. To be honest, to be no respecter of per- 
sons, is not yet enough. He must be believed 
such. 1 should be glad so far to indulge an old- 
fashioned and cherished professional sentiment as 
to say that I would have something venerable and 
illustrious attach to his character and function, ni 
the judgment and feelings of the Commonwealth. 

" But if this should be thought a little above or 
behind the time, I do not fear that I subject myself 
to the ridicule of any one when I claim that he be 
a man toward whom the love and trust and affection- 
ate admiration of the people should flow ; not a man 
perching for a winter and summer in our court- 
houses and then gone forever ; but one to whose 
benevolent face, and bland and dignified manners, 
and firm administration of the whole learning of 
the law, we become accustomed ; whom our eyes 
anxiously, not in vain, explore when we enter the 
temple of justice ; toward whom our attachment 
and trust grow ever with the growth of his own 
reputation : T would have him one who might look 



THE LAWYER. 21 

back from the venerable last years of Mansfield or 
Marshall and recall such testimonies as these to the 
great and good judge : 

" ' The young men saw me and hid themselves, and the aged 
arose and stood up. 

" * The princes refrained from talking, and laid their hand 
upon their mouth. 

" ' When the ear heard me, then it blessed me, and when the 
eye saw me, it gave witness to me. 

" ' Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, 
and him that had none to help him. 

'• ' The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon 
me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. 

" ' I put on righteousness, and it clothed me. My judgment 
was as a robe and a diadem. I was eyes to the blind, and feet 
was I to the lame. 

" ' I was a father to the poor, and the cause which I knew not 
I searched out. 

•' ' And I brake the jaws of the wicked, and I plucked the 
spoil out of his teeth.' 

'' Give to the community such a judge, and 
1 care little who makes the rest of the Constitution, 
or what party administers it. It will be a free gov- 
ernment I know. Let us repose secure under the 
shade of a learned, impartial, and trusted magis- 
tracy, and we need no more." 

There may be paragraphs in oratory, both an- 
cient and modern, either more concise in expres- 
sion, or more elevated in character, or more sublime 
in the precepts taught, or more brilliant in imagery, 
but in ease and ingenuity of argument, in aptness 



22 RUFUS CHOATE 

of illustration, in fertility of language and beauty 
of diction combined, these passages may well chal- 
lenge comparison with the best selections from ar- 
gumentative orations. 

Nor let it be forgotten that, for more than a 
third of a century, in a professional practice which 
was vast from the beginning to the end, Mr. Choate 
exhibited constantly like qualities and powers. 

A lay-member of the convention assigned as a 
reason for favoring an elective judiciary that, in 
some cases, as he alleged, erroneous decisions had 
been pronounced from the bench. Mr. Choate 
thus dealt with the objection, and thus closed his 
speech : 

" I have lost a good many cases, first and last, and 
I hope to try and expect to lose a good many more ; 
but I never heard a client in my life, however dis- 
satisfied with the verdict or the charge, say a word 
about changing the tenure of the judicial office. I 
greatly doubt if I have heard as many as three 
express themselves dissatisfied w^ith the judge ; 
though, times without number, they have regret- 
ted that he found himself compelled to go against 
them. My own tenure I have often thought in 
danger ; but I am yet to see the first client who 
thought of meddling with that of the court. What 
is true of those clients is true of the whole people 
of Massachusetts. Sir, that people have two traits 
of character— just as our political system, in which 



THE LAWYER. 



23 



that character is shown forth, has two great ends. 
They love liberty ; that is one trait. They love it, 
and they possess it to their hearts' content. Free 
as storms to-day do they know it and feel it, every 
one of them, from the sea to the Green Mountains. 
But there is another side to their character, and 
that is the old Anglo-Saxon instinct of property ; 
the rational and the creditable desire to be secure 
in life, in reputation, in the earnings of daily labor^ 
in the little all which makes up the treasures and the 
dear charities of the humblest home, the desire to 
feel certain that when they come to die the last will 
shall be kept, the smallest legacy of affection shall 
reach its object, although the giver is in his grave ; 
this desire, and the sound sense to know that a 
learned, impartial, and honored judiciary is the only 
means of having it indulged. They have nothing 
timorous in them, as touching the largest liberty. 
They rather like the exhilaration of crowding sail on 
the noble old ship, and giving her to scud away be- 
fore a fourteen-knot breeze ; but they know, too, 
that if the storm comes on to blow, and the masts 
go overboard, and the gun-deck is rolled under 
water, and the lee-shore, edged with foam, thunders 
under her stern, that the sheet-anchor and best 
bower then are everything ! Give them good 
ground-tackle, and they will carry her round the 
world and back again, till there shall be no more 
sea." 

In this extract there is an exuberance of illus- 
tration which passes the limits set by critics and 



24 RUFUS CHOATE 

careful writers, yet it was not only tolerated, it was 
applauded by the ablest body of men ever assem- 
bled in Massachusetts. 

But, whatever may be the estimate of Mr. 
Choate's career in the field of politics and states- 
manship, it was his ambition to rule the twelve 
men upon the panel, and his triumphs were won at 
the bar. His vocation was the law ; politics and 
statesmanship were avocations to which he turned 
temporarily for relaxation, or under a sense of duty 
to the public. To these, however, he never gave 
his mind continuously and without reserve, nor 
lent his powers in all their fullness. 

Of the objects of human ambition, the pur- 
pose to rule the twelve men upon the panel 
may not be the highest, but it is an honorable 
object, and in the case of Mr. Choate it was the 
object to which his talents and genius were best 
adapted. 

The highest secular pursuit is statesmanship — 
the government of a country. Those who frame 
constitutions and make laws are of the higher de- 
partment ; those who interpret and administer the 
laws, both constitutional and statute laws, are in 
the second department, but each department is 
equally important to the public welfare. The 
ability to frame constitutions and to enact laws 
implies the capacity to discern legal distinctions, 



THE LA WYER. 25 

and the learning and skill to protect rights and to 
remedy wrongs by systematic agencies. 

It is the object of governments to regulate the 
relations of men to men, and of men to things, upon 
ethical principles capable of general application. 
The study of those principles and of their applica- 
tion in different countries and in different ages is 
the work of the lawyer and the necessity of the 
statesman. Hence it is that in every country the 
rule of the lawyer begins where and when the rule 
of the soldier ends — not the rule of the profes- 
sional lawyer exclusively, but of such as have 
legal perceptions and that training which enables 
them to apply legal principles in public affairs. In 
all governments the end sought is dictated by the 
ruling force, whether the body of the people, as in 
some countries, or the hereditary dynast}^, as in 
others. 

In English-speaking countries, the statesman 
devises the laws, the judge interprets them, and the 
jury applies them in all courts of law, and not in- 
frequently in courts of equity. Thus, finally, the 
protection of the rights of liberty, property, and 
reputation is confided to the twelve men upon the 
panel. Hence the wisdom of the observation made 
by Brougham that ^^ all we see about us, kings, 
lords, and commons, the whole machinery of the 
state, all the apparatus of the system and its various 



26 RUFUS CHOATE 

workings, end in simply bringing twelve good men 
into a box."'^ But how are the twelve good men 
to find the truth ? The judge knows nothing of the 
case ; the jury know nothing of the case. The 
attorneys and advocates are the eyes and ears of 
the court — the agencies that develop the facts in 
the presence of judge and jury, and thus enable 
the judge to apply the law, and the jury to find 
the facts. 

If deprived of the agency and aid of attorneys, 
the courts of justice would soon lose their value. 
By jury-trials, the rights of men are decided, and, 
as a verdict is not a precedent, the evils result- 
ing from error are limited to the case at bar. The 
rule of the twelve is a limited rule ; but the decis- 
ions of the twelve, when massed and considered 
together, touch and control nearly all the contro- 
verted questions of society. 

In this view of the importance of jury-trials, it 
was not a low ambition, nor an unworthy purpose, 
which led Mr. Choate to select that forum for the 
development and exhibition of his powers, talents, 
and genius. 

The questions submitted to a jury are often 
questions of magnitude, in a public sense, and they 
are always questions of present and pressing im- 



* *• Present State of the Law," February 7, 1828. 



THE LAWYER. 2/ 

portance to the parties concerned. In the inves- 
tigations incident to and necessary in the trial of 
causes, not only is a knowledge of the law required, 
but a knowledge also of the arts, industries, and 
sciences of the world is essential to the advocate. 
Beyond these qualifications even, there is a field for 
the use — I do not say display — but a field for the 
use of every variety of learning that can be gath- 
ered by the most diligent student. In all these ac- 
quisitions, Mr, Choate was the best-equipped advo- 
cate ever known by the American bar. 

For half a centur}^ he pursued his studies, spe- 
cial and general, in season and out of season, by 
day and by night, denying himself pleasures, amuse- 
ments, relaxations even, dividing his time between 
his library and the court-room. 

- The Bible was a book of constant study, and 
his devotion to the New Testament in Greek led 
Mr. Webster to say, as he examined the books upon 
the shelves of Mr. Choate's library, " Thirteen edi- 
tions of the Greek Testament, and not one copy of 
the Constitution of your country I " He translated 
the Greek and Latin classics, studied French law 
and histor}^ in the language, and in English he read 
everything from the Black- Letter to Dickens. The 
four great men of England, in his estimation and in 
their order, were Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, and 
Burke. Indulging in exaggeration,, he wrote to 



28 RUFUS CHOATE 

Sumner, " Out of Burke might be cut fifty Mack- 
intoshes, one hundred and seventy-five Macaulays, 
forty Jeffreys, and two hundred and fifty Sir Robert 
Peels, and leave him greater than Pitt and Fox to- 
gether." 

With a mind so given to exaggeration, it is 
difficult to realize that he was a close • — not a 
concise, but a close — logical reasoner, whose ar- 
guments, whether to court or jury, were seldom 
overloaded or embarrassed by imagery or illus- 
trations. 

Logic is the one quality, the one power, abso- 
lutely essential to the advocate. Without this there 
can be no success. There are advocates, however, 
usually men of an inferior sort, but sometimes they 
are men at once able and disingenuous, whose ar- 
guments are logical in the parts but illogical in 
their combinations. Mr. Choate's arguments were 
logical in the parts and logical in the whole. His 
competitors in the field of logic were Mason, Web- 
ster, and Curtis, and he was the equal of either of 
them in the propriety and scientific arrangement 
of his arguments, though not in the power of state- 
ment ; but in learning, in genius, in the capacity to 
weave and unweave the webs of human testimon}^, 
he was superior to either of these men, as he v/as to 
all the lawyers of America of the generations to 
which they belonged. 



THE LAWYER, 29 

In addressing a court upon questions of law, or 
even upon mixed questions of law and fact, it is 
both wise and safe to limit the discussion to pivotal 
propositions — those propositions on which the case 
must be decided. In this faculty, Judge Curtis 
excelled ; but so predominant was this quality in 
him as to impair essentially his standing as a jury- 
lawyer. In Mr. Webster, the logical power, the 
power of statement, wealth of imagination, and pu- 
rity and splendor of diction, were so combined as 
to render him equally formidable before the court 
and to the jury. But Mr. Choate excelled Mr. 
Webster in the variety and extent of his learning, 
in the facility and genius that he displayed in the 
cross-examination of witnesses — a field in which 
causes are sometimes won, but more frequently 
lost — in his resources of argument, often designed 
to meet the peculiarities of individual jurors, and 
in his ability to repeat a thought with new illustra- 
tions, and in a diction at once fresh and attrac- 
tive. 

Much may be assumed of a court, but of a jury 
it can not be assumed that secondary considera- 
tions may not have great weight, and therefore the 
skillful advocate will sometimes dwell upon insig- 
nificant topics, and in different forms present his 
views to the various men upon the panel. In all 
these things Mr. Choate was unsurpassed, and yet 



30 



RUFUS CHOATE 



so great were his powers that his arguments were 
never tedious, even to those who thought further 
discussion unnecessar}^ 

It is the misfortune of many men of large read- 
ing, that, in the use of the knowledge thus acquired, 
they show their dependence upon notes and com- 
monplace-books — those aids to inferior intellects 
and hindrances to growth in the young. What 
Mr. Choate read he assimilated to himself, so that 
in its use there were no betrayals of the sources. 
His quotations were not many, and generally they 
were brief and so apt that their omission seemed 
impossible. When commonplace-books are dis- 
carded by the student, he will then become self-re- 
liant, and read with the purpose of holding in his 
memory whatever may be worth possessing. 

Mr. Choate seemed never to forget anything, 
and his practice of wanting his arguments served 
to fix in his memor}^ what he wrote, or to aid him 
in reproducing it. But this habit must have been 
due to a purpose, inasmuch as his powxr as an ex- 
tempore speaker was not only adequate to all the 
exigencies of professional life, but no distinction 
could be made between his written and his unwrit- 
ten arguments. 

At the end the test of greatness is success, A 
single triumph is not success either in the field or 
the forum; but a series of victories due always to 



THE LAWYER, 3 1 

plan, courage, and brilliancy of execution place 
the actor above the region of criticism as to 
the presence of extraordinary powers. Traits of 
weakness there may be, errors there may be, 
deficiencies there may be, but the whole must be 
accepted as a form of greatness that neither ene- 
mies nor critics can disturb. 

For more than a quarter of a century Mr. 
Choate was accustomed to deal with the most 
important causes pending in the tribunals of the 
country, and of every form known to our system 
of jurisprudence, and always he was equal to the 
cause and to the opposing advocate. Of the great 
lawyers of this country, after Mr. Webster, whose 
greatness as a lawyer was an inherent quality of 
his greatness as a man, Mr. Pinckney and Mr. 
Wirt would be first named. In a comparison of 
the three, it is to be said that Mr. Choate had all 
the logical power required by the case, and that in 
learning, in resources and ingenuity of argument, 
in exuberance of diction, in aptness and splendor of 
illustration, neither Pinckney nor Wirt can be com- 
pared with Choate. 

There is a quality of poetry, and it is neither 
the measure nor the rhythm, that not only adorns 
prose arguments, but enlightens the understand- 
ings of those who listen and those who read. The 
speech of Antony over the body of Cr^sar may be 



32 RUFUS CHOATE 

SO condensed as at the same time to preserve the 
logifc and destroy the effect. 

In comparing the printed speeches of Wirt and 
Pinckney with the printed speeches of Choate, 
some allowance ought to be made in favor of the 
first two, although it is probable that Wirt himself 
reported his argument in the case of Gibbons and 
Ogden, and Pinckney may have done the same 
in the case of Hodges. Mr. Choate was a rapid 
speaker, and the reporters were not always able to 
follow him. Of the report of his argument in the 
Dalton case he said, " Not verbally, not verbally, 
but the general nonsense of the thing they have 
got." 

Of English advocates neither Erskine nor Cur- 
ran nor North, who most resembled Choate in style, 
can be compared with him in learning, whether in 
the law or in general literature ; and the testimony 
of the printed speeches is that he excelled them all 
in grace of diction, in ingenuity of argument, and 
in the capacity to command the aid of the better 
sentiments of the mind and the more elevating 
passions of the human heart without awakening 
suspicion or arousing opposition by a statement 
of the end sought, or by a suggestion of the pur- 
pose in view. If Brougham's superior learning be 
admitted, and in the law and general literature it is 
not easy to imagine such superiority, the fact re- 



THE LAWYER. 33 

mains that, in ease of composition, in the resources 
of argument, in imagination, and in diction, he was 
far inferior to Choate. 

In a letter to Zachary Macaulay, in which he 
gave advice for the education ol the son, afterward 
Lord Macaulay, Brougham says that he wrote 
the peroration of his defense of Queen Caroline 
nineteen times before its delivery. Of Choate 
nothing of the sort was true. He was in the habit 
of transfixing passing thoughts and fugitive sen- 
tences by writing, and for this purpose he often 
left his bed in the night. Such passages may have 
been rewritten in his speeches and arguments, but 
there is no reason to suppose that beyond this he 
subjected himself to the labor of revising and re- 
writing. 

Many years since I attended a meeting of the 
Boston Scientific Club, at the house of Mr. Thomas 
G. Carey. Mr. Carey was a gentleman of wealth 
and taste, and his rooms were adorned with paint- 
ings and works of art in which he was a connois- 
seur. The evening was given to an essay upon 
paintings, by Mr. Carey. Of that essay I have 
preserved one thought onl}^ — that the finest paint- 
ings are produced by the smallest outlay of pig- 
ment and the fewest strokes of the brush. And it 
is true that the absolutely great things in art, in 
war, and in literature, are the products of abso- 



34 RUFUS CHOATE 

lutely great men and by the ordinary movements 
of great minds. 

It is impossible to associate the thought of 
study, or of what we call intellectual effort, with 
the Sermon on the Mount. 

The writings of Shakespeare show no marks of 
paring and cutting, of reconstruction and rewrit- 
ing. It is otherwise, however, with Bacon, Milton, 
Addison, Johnson, Byron, and Brougham. 

Of Choate's many arguments, only a few are 
preserved, but they were prepared at the moment 
and under the pressure of business. In great 
causes he had many days, and not infrequently 
weeks, for thought, but his time was occupied ne- 
cessarily in the trial itself, leaving only spare mo- 
ments and the night for the work of preparation. 

Mr. Choate's powers and resources are best dis- 
played in the report of the Dalton trial. This vvas 
a libel for divorce by Frank Dalton against his 
wife, Helen Maria Dalton, born Gove. 

Mrs. Dalton was the daughter of a retired 
merchant, and was married to Dalton in the year 
1855, and at the age of about eighteen years. Soon 
after her marriage she became intimate with a 
young man named Sumner, which led finally to a 
confession on her part, but of such a nature as to 
be open to two interpretations. It led, however, to 
an attack upon Sumner by Dalton, which was fol- 



THE LAWYER. 



35 



lowed by the death of Sumner, the arrest and im- 
prisonment of Dalton for manslaughter, and his 
conviction finally of a simple assault. Until about 
the time of Dalton's release from prison, he ac- 
cepted his wife's statement as an admission of 
frivolity and indiscretion, of which she had re- 
pented bitterly ; but his associations or reflections, 
or both together, wrought an entire change in his 
feelings and opinions, and he came finally to regard 
his wife's confession as an admission of guilt. At 
the trial, two persons, who were present at the 
confession, so represented the interview between 
Dalton and his wife. The cross-examination of 
these witnesses by Mr. Durant, and the argument 
of Mr. Choate, destroyed their testimony utterly. 

Never in any cause were the genius and nobil- 
ity of an advocate more conspicuous than in Mr. 
Choate in that contest. He did not aim merely to 
satisfy the twelve men upon the panel that Mrs. 
Dalton was innocent, but it was his higher pur- 
pose to satisfy Dalton that she was worthy to 
be his wife, and it has been said that this pur- 
pose he accomplished — and all against heavy 
odds. 

There were two swift witnesses, one of them 
the brother-in-law of Dalton, to report the con- 
fession ; and a wet-nurse, to testify to an attempt 
on the part of Mrs. Dalton to destroy the fruit of 



36 RUFUS C HO ATE 

her crime. The witnesses, one after another, were 
extinguished literally, and Dalton was brought 
finally to accept the advocate's view of the case. 
Twice in the exordium of his argument does he 
declaim against the folly of Mrs. Dalton, coupled 
with a denial of the crime charged in the libel. This 
is the refrain of his discourse, but always in fresh 
language, as though the thought itself had never 
before been used. Thus he commences : 

" Mr. Foreman and Gentlemen: I congratu- 
late you on approaching, at least, the close of this 
case, so severe and painful to all of us. One effort 
more of your indulgence I have to ask, and then 
we shall retire from your presence, satisfied and 
grateful that everything which candor and patience 
and inteUigence can do for these afflicted suitors 
has been done. 

" It very rarely indeed happens, gentlemen, in 
the trial of a civil controversy, that both parties 
have an equal, or rather a vast interest that one of 
them — in this case the defendant — should be clearly 
proved to be entitled to your verdict. Unusual as 
it is, in the view I take of this case, such a one is 
now on trial. 

'' To both of these parties it is of supreme impor- 
tance, in the view that I take of it, that you should 
find this young wife, erring, indiscreet, imprudent, 
forgetful of herself, if it be so. but innocent of the 
last and the greatest crime of a married woman. I 
say to both parties it is important. I cannot deny, of 



THE LAWYER, 



37 



course, gentlemen, that her interest in such a result 
is perhaps the greater of the two. For her, indeed, 
it is not at all too much to say that everything is 
staked upon the result. I can not, of course, hope, 
I can not say, that any verdict which you can ren- 
der in this case can give her back again the happy 
and sunny life which seemed opening upon her two 
years ago ; I can not say it, because I do not think 
that any verdict you can render will ever enable 
her to recall those wrecks of folly, and frivolity, and 
vanity without a blush, without a tear ; I can not 
desire that it should be so. But, gentlemen, whether 
these grave and impressive proceedings shall ter- 
minate by sending this young wife from your pres- 
ence with the scarlet letter upon her brow ; whether 
in this, her morning of life, her name shall be thus 
publicly stricken from the roll of virtuous women, 
her whole future darkened by dishonor and waylaid 
by temptation ; her companions driven from her 
side ; herself cast out, it may be, upon common so- 
ciety, the sport of libertines, unassisted by public 
opinion, or s)^mpathy, or self-respect — this certainly 
rests with you. For her, therefore, I am surely 
warranted in saying that more than her life is here 
at stake. Whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever 
things are lovely, whatsoever things are pure, what- 
soever things are of good report, if there be any 
virtue, if there be any praise, all the chances that 
are to be left her in life, for winning and holding 
these holy, beautiful, and needful things, rest with 
you. . . . But is there not another person, gentlemen, 
interested in these proceedings, with an equal or 



38 RUFUS C HO ATE 

at least a supreme interest with the respondent, that 
you shall be able by your verdict to say that Helen 
Dalton is not guilty of the crime of adultery, and is 
not that person her husband ? I do not say, gentle- 
men, that he ought to feel or would feel grateful 
for a verdict that should acquit her on any ground 
of doubt or technicality, leaving everybody to sus- 
pect her guilty ; I do not say that he would feel 
contented with such a verdict as that, though I say 
it would be her sacred right that such a verdict 
should be rendered, if your minds were left in that 
state. He must acquiesce whether the verdict is 
satisfactory to him in that particular or not. But, 
gentlemen, if 3^ou can here and now, on this evi- 
dence, acquit your consciences and render a verdict 
that shall assure this husband that a jury of Suffolk, 
men of honor and spirit, some of them his personal 
friends, believe that he has been the victim of a 
cruel and groundless jealousy ; that they believe 
that he has been led by that scandal that circulates 
about him, and has influenced him everywhere ; 
that he has been made to misconceive the nature 
and overestimate the extent of the injury his wife 
has done him ; if he could be made to believe and 
see, as I believe you see and believe, and every 
other human being sees and believes, that the story 
b}^ which he has been induced to institute these 
proceedings is falser than the coinage of hell ; if 
you can thus enable him to see that, without dis- 
honor, he may again take her to his bosom, let me 
ask you if any other human being can do another 
so great a kindness as this ? " 



THE LAWYER. 39 

And thus Mr. Choate went on through two full 
days, analyzing the evidence, crushing the adverse 
witnesses, explaining disagreeable facts, admitting 
and condemning the conduct of his client, but al- 
ways denying the extreme guilt charged, and all 
with a splendor of diction and ingenuity of argu- 
ment to which the present generation of the habit- 
uis of court-houses are strangers. 

Never, elsewhere, not even in works of ethics or 
romance, w^ere the nature and evils of flirtation so 
set forth and at once condemned, explained, and, in 
a degree, excused. Near the close of the argument, 
jNIr. Choate said : 

*' I leave her case, therefore, upon this statement, 
and respectfully submit that, for both their sakes, 
you will render a verdict promptly and joyfully in 
favor of Helen Dalton — for both their sakes. There 
is a future for them both together, I think; but if 
that be not so — if it be that this matter has pro- 
ceeded so far that her husband's affections have 
been alienated, and that a happy life in her case has 
become impracticable, yet, for all that, let there be 
no divorce. For no levity, no vanity, no indiscre- 
tion, let there be a divorce. ... If they may not be 
dismissed then, gentlemen, to live again together, 
for her sake and her parents', sustain her ; give her 
back to self-respect and the assistance of that public 
opinion which all of us require." 

He closed with a quotation from one of Mrs. 



40 RUFUS C HO ATE 

Dalton's letters to her husband : "■ Wishing you 
much happiness and peace, with much love, if you 
will accept it, I remain your wife," and added: 

" So may she remain until that one of them to 
whom it is appointed first to die, shall find the peace 
of the grave! " 

As the Dalton case was the outcome of hu- 
man passions, so in the trial there were constant 
appeals to the sympathies of the jury and the 
public. 

In the defense, Mr. Choate was not merely the 
advocate ; his nature was such that he defended 
Mrs. Dalton as though she had been his daughter 
or sister. 

But let it not be imagined that his success lay 
in the nature and circumstances of the cause. He 
was equally great upon constitutional questions, in 
the domain of the common law, the patent law, 
and in admiraltv. 

He died in the fullness of his powers, when he 
was less than sixty years of age, free from any 
stain on his personal character, and with no just 
imputation on his professional career. Endowed 
as he was by nature with wonderful powers for 
labor, for the acquisition of knowledge, and gifted 
as. he was in all the arts of oratory, he takes rank 
with the ablest advocates who have honored and 



THE LAWYER. 41 

illustrated the profession of the law in modern 
times. Most men in the profession toil for a liv- 
ing, or for money, or for the transitory fame 
which sometimes attends the career of a success- 
ful lawyer. 

Mr. Choate studied law as a science and prac- 
ticed it as an art. He was indifferent to money, 
indifferent to fame. He neglected the care of his 
arguments and speeches, and he made only imper- 
fect and desultory records of his services. Until 
his association with his son-in-law, Mr. Bell, his 
income was only sufficient to meet his moderate 
expenditures in everything except books. In 185 1 
I called at his house in the evening for professional 
consultation, and with me went a country lawyer 
who was not accustomed to the large libraries of 
modern times. We were taken into Mr. Choate's 
library, which filled two rooms in the second story 
of the house. The partition had been cut away, 
and thus at one glance we could see the extent of 
the library, the files of books rising to the ceiling, 
and occupying the larger part of the floor. Said 
my associate, in amazement, *' What a collection 
of books you have, Mr. Choate ! " 

" Yes — more than I have paid for ; but that is 
the bookseller's business, not mine." This was an 
exhibition of his habit of extravagance in state- 
m.ent. Let us not infer that he was indifferent to 



42 



RUFUS C HO ATE 



his pecuniary obligations, although he was indiffer- 
ent to money as a possession. 

In an acquaintance of nearly twenty years, I 
was led to esteem Mr. Choate, perhaps to admire 
him. Long ago I gave a half promise to myself 
that I would make a mark upon the sands of time, 
though slight it might be, as a tribute to his genius. 
From that acquaintance I received the impression 
that he was the ablest jury-lawyer that America 
had then seen. Since his death I have had other 
twenty years for observation and reflection, and 
I announce my conclusion in one half-sentence — 
that, for all the varied exigencies of professional 
life, Rufus Choate was the best-equipped advocate 
who ever stood in a judicial forum and spoke the 
English language. 

All this, and yet Mr. Choate's greatness was not 
of the absolute. It was a greatness achieved. It 
bore no relation to the supremacy of Shakespeare 
who spurned teachers and schools, and who for 
nearly three centuries has controlled art in litera- 
ture and defied criticism. Mr. Choate's greatness 
had only a remote relation to that of Webster, of 
whom it may be said that we can not imagine a 
condition of society in which his superiority Avould 
not have been recognized, even if the training of 
the schools had been wanting. 

Mr, Choate, however, is a conspicuous example 



THE LAWYER. 43 

of the influence of schools and culture upon a man 
of genius endowed with the virtue of industry ; 
and his career is an earnest, a sufficient protest 
against the opinion that the schools and universi- 
ties should not teach all literature as well as all 
science, and in that literature all languages in which 
its gems are found or which contribute to the lan- 
guage that we speak. Not everything in literature 
and science for everybody ; but there should be 
somebody for everything, and, that there may be 
somebody for everything, everything should be 
taught. 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 

In the month of January, 1839, I niade my first 
visit to the city of Washington, and for the first 
time I then saw and heard Mr. Webster. He had 
reached the summit of his fame as an orator, 
and it was then that in personal appearance he 
fully justified the encomium bestowed upon him 
by his friends and admirers who had crowned him 
" the godlike Daniel." 

I heard him make one or two brief common- 
place observations in the Senate, but I had also 
the privilege of hearing his argument before the 
Supreme Court in the case of Smith vs. Richards, 
reported in volume thirteen of Peters's reports. 
His opponent was Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky. 

Mr. Webster appeared for the appellant, who 
had appealed from the decree of the Circuit Court 
for the Southern District of New York, by which 
a contract for the sale of a gold-mine in Virginia 
had been annulled, upon the ground that the vend- 
er (Smith) made false representations at the time 
of the sale in regard to material facts. 



THE STATESMAN. 



45 



The decree of the Circuit Court was affirmed 
by the Supreme Court, three of the nine judges 
— Story, McLean, and Baldwin — dissenting. Of 
these nine judges, only three — Taney, Story, and 
McLean — are now known, even to the profession. 
Yet to an inexperienced person it was an awe- 
inspiring tribunal. Nor has the impression then 
produced upon me been removed by time and 
experience. In like manner the court will estab- 
lish and maintain its power over many successive 
generations of American citizens. If the court 
shall ever be in peril, its peril will be due to poli- 
tics — to the disposition of its members either to 
mingle in the political contests of the time, or to 
seek political distinction and office. Happily, thus 
far in our history, the small number of judges who 
have attempted to step from the bench to the presi- 
dency have been disappointed. 

Speaking only of the past, it is to be noted as 
a singular circumstance that the three most dis- 
tinguished judges were active politicians when 
they were appointed. 

Marshall, Story, and Taney were pronounced 
partisans, and upon political questions their opin- 
ions as judges, were shaped or modified usually 
by the views of the poHtician. The contrary 
could not have been anticipated. It would not 
often happen that a Federalist and a State-rights 



46 DANIEL WEBSTER 

Democrat would agree upon questions testing 
the scope of the powers of the national Gov- 
ernment. 

It Is the boast of a class of lawyers — not a nu- 
merous class — that they seldom or never lose a 
cause. Such has not been the experience of the 
greatest nor of the purest of the profession. And 
assuredly such was not Mr. Webster's experience. 
Without claiming that I have made a complete 
examination of the reports, it is safe to assume 
that Mr. Webster failed in one half of the causes 
that he argued in the Supreme Court of the United 
States in the period of his largest practice. 

With the increase of business, and with the 
increase of the instruments and agencies for the 
transaction of business, new questions will arise 
inevitably. On those questions differences of opin- 
ion must exist. 

The general public is inclined to accept the 
notion that an attorney is inexcusable, if he ad- 
vises a suit in a bad cause, and that an advocate 
is worthy of stripes if he defends a wicked client, 
or appears on the wrong side of a contested case. 
In presence of the circumstance that there are 
differences of opinion in courts, sometimes upon 
questions of pure law, sometimes upon the admissi- 
bility of testimony, and sometimes upon the value 
of evidence, it is not strange that attorneys and 



THE STATESMAN. 



47 



advocates, in advance of the trial and the tests of 
judicial proceedings, are unable to estimate with 
certainty the character of the causes that they are 
called to promote or to defend. 

Again, I heard Mr. Webster at the completion 
of the Bunker Hill Monument, June 17, 1843. He 
was then in his sixty-second year, but time had 
not made any impression upon his vigorous physi- 
cal organization, and his oratorical powers were 
unimpaired. He spoke to an audience that 
stretched far beyond the power of any merely 
human voice. It was, however, an audience in 
full sympathy with the occasion and with the 
speaker. It was the last considerable gathering of 
the survivors of the War of the Revolution. They 
numbered but one hundred and eight. At the 
dedication of the Acton Monument, in 185 1, only 
two of that number survived ; and at the reception 
of the Prince of Wales, in 1859, there remained 
of those who fought at Bunker Hill only a Mr. 
Farnham, whose life had been extended to about 
one hundred years. 

Mr. Webster had been called by President 
Harrison to the head of the Cabinet in 1841, and 
he continued in the office of the Secretary of the 
Department of State under President Tyler until 
May, 1843. 

By his adherence to President Tyler he alien- 



48 DANIEL WEBSTER 

ated his followers in Massachusetts, and in Septem- 
ber, 1842, the Whig State Convention declared ''a 
full and linal separation " between the Whig party 
and the President. Mr. AVebster treated this ac- 
tion as a censure of himself. In that he did not 
err ; but he was not then disposed to submit to the 
censure without answer, nor even without resist- 
ance and threats of retaliation. His friends called 
a meeting in Faneuil Hall. The meeting was held 
September 30. The mayor of the city presided. 
In the preceding August the Ashburton Treaty had 
been signed. The apprehensions of war growing 
out of the northeastern boundary controversy were 
quieted, and Mr. Webster had thus arrested the 
adverse drift of public sentiment. The mayor, in 
his introductory address, said that Mr. Webster 
might " be left to take care of his own honor and 
reputation." With emphasis Mr. Webster adopted 
the remark, and then proceeded to say that, as he 
must bear the consequences of the decision, he had 
*' better be trusted to make it." He asserted his 
right to be counted as a Whig, and he intimated 
that, if the issue were pressed, he would appeal to 
the State of Massachusetts. His opponents wxre 
not ready for an appeal to the State, and the tend- 
ency of public sentiment was again in Mr, Web- 
ster's favor, He resigned his seat m the Cabinet in 
May, 1843, and in 1845 he was again elected a 



THE STATESMAN. 49 

member of the Senate, and by the representatives 
of the Whig party that had denounced him in 
1842. 

At the time of his election, Mr. Webster had 
re-established his supremacy over the Whig party, 
although the division between '' conscience Whigs " 
and " cotton Whigs " was visible. 

The differences between the two wings of the 
party culminated in 1848 in the secession of the 
anti-slavery men, who supported Van Buren and 
Adams in the election of that year. 

At the opening of the January session of the 
Legislature of Massachusetts for the year 1847, 
Fletcher Webster, the eldest of Mr. Webster's 
sons, took his seat in the House of Representatives 
as a member from the city of Boston. 

Caleb Gushing was returned from the towm of 
Newburyport. Mr. Gushing had been a Whig. 
He was a member of Gongress at the time of 
President Tyler's defection, wdien he became one 
of the Tyler body-guard, or Omnibus party, as the 
supporters of Tyler in the national House of Rep- 
resentatives were called. In November, 1846, 
when he was elected to the Legislature, he had 
only recently returned from Ghina, where, as 
commissioner appointed by President Tyler, he 
had negotiated an important treaty with that 
countiy. 



50 



DANIEL WEBSTER 



On the first day of the session of the Legisla- 
ture, Mr. Gushing introduced a resolution to appro- 
priate twenty thousand dollars to aid in equipping 
a regiment for the war in Mexico. The regiment 
had been raised, the company -officers had been 
chosen, and Mr. Gushing had either been appointed 
colonel, or there was a general impression that he 
was to have the command. Money, however, was 
more necessary than officers. The war was un- 
popular in Massachusetts, and the Whig party, 
with here and there an exception, was hostile to 
the appropriation. 

The resolution was sent to a special committee, 
of which Mr. Gushing was the chairman, and of 
which I was made a member. According to the 
then prevailing custom, the committee was com- 
posed, in the majority, of friends of the measure. 
Gonsequently, the resolution was reported, with a 
recommendation in its favor. 

Mr. Webster's youngest son, Edward, was a 
captain in the regiment. It was natural, therefore, 
that Fletcher Webster should support the resolu- 
tion. It was understood, also, that Mr. Webster 
favored the appropriation. In the discussion, 
Fletcher Webster made one remark that indi- 
cated the presence of his father's blood. In urg- 
ing the passage of the resolution, he assured his 
Whig associates that they would be required to 



THE STATESMAN, 5 1 

explain their votes against the appropriation, and 
he then said, with emphasis, "' and explanations are 
always disagreeable." 

Fletcher Webster was a man of more than ordi- 
nary ability, but he was weighted by his father's 
pre-eminence, and he realized, whenever he spoke, 
that comparisons were instituted to his disadvan- 
tage. Again, while he was not under the average 
of men in height and weight, he felt his inferiority 
to his father in these particulars ; and he once said 
to me that a man could '' come to but little unless 
he was of good size and appearance." 

The acquaintance I thus formed with Fletcher 
Webster may have been the cause of some kind- 
nesses which Mr. Webster extended to me. 

Within a few weeks after Mr. Webster deliv- 
ered his speech of the 7th of March, 1850, he vis- 
ited Boston, and took rooms at the Revere House. 
The Legislature was then in session, and J. Thomas 
Stevenson, as the friend of Mr. Webster, gave in- 
formal invitations to members to call upon Mr. 
Webster on an evening named. 

His speech of the 7th of March had alienated 
the Whigs generally, and a small number only vent- 
ured to call upon their old chief. The Demo- 
cratic members of the Legislature were free from 
constraint. I called with others, and it w^as then 
that I was introduced to hin^. He wore the dress 



52 DANIEL WEBSTER 

known as his court dress. Time had wrought 
great changes in the seven preceding years. His 
form was erect, his hair retained its dark color, 
but he had lost flesh, his cheeks were sunken, and 
the black circles around his large eyes were more 
distinct than they had been in 1843. The marks 
of physical beauty had disappeared; but the evi- 
dences of majesty of person and greatness of intel- 
lect remained. As I stood before him I estimated 
his height, which was then less than five feet and 
eleven inches. His speech of the 7th of March 
had destroyed his hold upon the Whig party of the 
State, and it had destroyed the hold of the Whig 
party upon the State itself. 

During this visit Mr. Webster's friends peti- 
tioned the city government for the use of Faneuil 
Hall, that Mr. Webster might explain and defend 
his speech of the 7th of March. 

The prayer of the petition was rejected. The 
city government was in the hands of the Whig 
party, and John P. Bigelow, whose sister was the 
wife of Abbott Lav/rence, was the mayor. The 
responsibility for the indignity was laid upon Mr. 
Lawrence and the wing of the party that he repre- 
sented. To Mr. Webster Faneuil Hall was conse- 
crated ground, and the refusal of the city govern- 
ment to open its doors to him and his friends was 
an indignity which he never forgot and which he 



THE STATESMAN. 53 

never forgave. The act of the city government 
was not only unwise — it was an act for which there 
was neither defense nor excuse. For a third of a 
century Mr. Webster had been the chief person- 
age in Massachusetts, and in intellectual power he 
was the first person in the republic. 

He had defended Massachusetts in her history ; 
he had again and again vindicated her public 
policy ; and the city of Boston was largely indebted 
to him for its business prosperity and for its emi- 
nent rank and influence in the councils of the na- 
tion. If his speech had been much more offensive 
than it was, the city which he had represented and 
honored, and to which he was deeply attached, 
should have given him an opportunity to explain 
and defend the course that he had chosen to pursue. 

In the month of September, 185 1, railway com- 
munication with Canada was established, and the 
State of Massachusetts and the city of Boston 
joined in celebrating the event. 

Mr. Webster was then Secretary of State under 
President Fillmore. The President and three mem- 
bers of his Cabinet, Webster, Stuart, and Conrad, 
accepted the invitation to be present. Lord Elgin, 
Governor-General of Canada ; Sir Francis Hincks, 
Attorney - General ; Mr. Joseph Howe, of Nova 
Scotia, and other colonial officials, were present. 
Mr. Webster arrived in Boston several days in ad- 



54 DANIEL WEBSTER 

vance of the President, and took rooms at the 
Revere House. When I called upon him he said 
that he should cheerfully appear, if invited to do 
so, whenever the State appeared, but that he should 
have nothing to do with the city. He also said 
that upon the arrival of the President it would be 
a pleasure to him to introduce the members of the 
State government. 

Upon the arrival of Mr. Fillmore, the members 
of the State government went to the Revere House 
at about one o'clock in the afternoon. We were 
met by Mr. Stevenson, who informed Mr. Webster 
of our presence. He soon appeared, dressed in his 
court suit. We passed to the reception - room, 
where we found Mayor Bigelow engaged in intro- 
ducing the members of the city government. Mr. 
Webster paid no attention to the mayor, but he 
took possession of the floor, and in a loud voice he 
proceeded to announce the names of the gentlemen 
that he had in charge. 

His only apparent regret was the fact that they 
were not more numerous. It is difficult to compre- 
hend the hauteur of Mr. Webster's bearing, or the 
weight of the indignity that he heaped upon the 
mayor and his associates. Mr. Webster was en- 
titled to precedence, but he asserted himself as 
though the mayor were an offensive intruder and 
too low or too base for notice. 



THE STATESMAN. 55 

The day following our introduction the Presi- 
dent and the members of his Cabinet were received 
by the State authorities. It fell to me to make a 
speech of welcome. I prepared my speech, and 
gave it to the newspapers, but by an oversight, 
which I can not explain, I omitted all reference to 
Mr. Webster, although I had given a sentence to 
his associates who were present. At about eleven 
o'clock in the morning the fact of the omission oc- 
curred to me. I then prepared a paragraph, and 
sent it to the printers. 

At the reception the President was upon my 
right upon the dais, Secretaries Conrad and Stuart 
sat upon his right, and Mr. Webster had a seat 
upon my left. Neither Conrad nor Stuart gave 
any recognition of my allusion to them ; but when 
I referred to Mr. Webster, he rose from his seat 
immediately, and in return the immense audience re- 
sponded with cheers such as had often greeted him 
in his brightest days. In that act he exhibited the 
quality of the gentleman and the skill of the actor. 

' In his speech in reply he gave a very distinct 
indorsement to my administration of the affairs of 
the State, but not upon partisan grounds. The 
election in 185 1 was hotly contested, and I attribute 
my success to the support which Mr. Webster 
gave to me in that speech and privately to his 
friends. 



56 DANIEL WEBSTER 

In the month of May, 1852, the clergy of the 
Methodist Church held a National Convention in 
Boston. Mr. Webster was invited to make an ad- 
dress to the convention. The meeting was held in 
Faneuil Hall. It was Mr. Webster's last appear- 
ance on that historical stage. He was then a can- 
-didate for the presidency. It was understood that 
the occasion was designed to promote his ambition 
in that respect, but the time had passed when his 
appearance in public could advance his political 
fortunes. Age, disappointments, and disease had 
wrought terrible changes in his condition and ap- 
pearance. His form was wasted, his voice, once 
electric and commanding, had lost its power and 
cadence, and his intellectual faculties were slow in 
movement and lacking in force. In the reception- 
room he welcomed his old friend Thomas H. Per- 
kins, in the tones of voice which in former da3^s 
had charmed audiences that took but little interest 
in his methodical arguments. Mr. Webster had 
prepared the heads of his remarks upon sheets of 
note-paper, and his son Fletcher sat in front df 
him, and handed the sheets to his father, one by 
one, as the topics were treated. There were a few 
occasions when Mr. Webster's voice rang through 
the hall Avith something of its old-time force and 
tones, but generally he could not be heard at the 
distance of twenty feet. Indeed, many of his words 



THE STATESMAN. 57 

were inaudible to those who were upon the plat- 
form. 

The ambition of Mr. Webster and of his friends 
was not promoted by his appearance upon a stage 
where in his better days he had achieved many 
signal triumphs. 

Mr. Webster returned to Washington, where he 
awaited the action of the Whig Convention that 
assembled at Baltimore. There can be no doubt 
that the nomination of General Scott was a severe 
disappointment. That he should have anticipated 
his own nomination is an additional evidence of the 
infatuation which takes possession of men Avhose 
thoughts are directed to the presidency. Mr. 
Webster's friends, and probably Mr. Webster him- 
self, anticipated that the South would recognize 
its obligation for his speech of the 7th of March, 
1850. From the South, however, he received no 
support. His disappointment must have been bit- 
ter, but his " midnight speech," as it was called, was 
a masterpiece of self-control under trying circum- 
stances, and an exhibition of his genius as an orator, 
which equaled the best efforts of his best days. 

Upon the nomination of General Scott his 
friends called upon him for a speech, and after 
hstening to him they called upon Mr. Webster, in 
the hope that they might obtain his indorsement 
of the proceedings. 



58 DANIEL WEBSTER 

He was then impaired seriously in health and in 
spirits he was broken completely. His speech is 
worthy of notice as a singularly graceful effort, and 
as the last brilliant spark of his expiring genius : 

'■' I thank you, fellow-citizens, for your friendly 
and respectful call. I am very glad to see you. 

" Some of you have been engaged in an ardu- 
ous public duty at Baltimore, the object of your 
meeting being the selection of a fit person to be 
supported for the office of President of the United 
States. Others of you take an interest in the result 
of the deliberations of that assembly of Whigs. It 
so happened that my name among others was pre- 
sented on the occasion. Another candidate, how- 
ever, was preferred. 

*^ I have only to say, gentlemen, that the con- 
vention did, I doubt not, what it thought best, and 
exercised its discretion in the important matter 
committed to it. The result has caused me no per- 
sonal feeling whatever, nor any change of conduct 
or purpose. 

" What I have been I am in principle and in char- 
acter; and what I am, I hope to continue to be. 

*' Circumstances or opponents may triumph over 
my fortunes, but they will not triumph over my 
temper or my self-respect. 

'* Gentlemen, this is a serene and beautiful night. 
Ten thousand thousand of the lights of heaven 
illuminate the firmament. They rule the night. A 
few hours hence their glory will be extinguished. 



THE STATESMAN, ^q 

* Ye stars that glitter in the skies, 
And gayly dance before my eyes, 
What are ye when the sun shall rise ? ' 

" Gentlemen, there is not one among you who 
will sleep better to-night than I shall. If I wake I 
shall learn the hour from the constellations, and 1 
shall rise in the morning, God willing, with the lark ; 
and though the lark is a better songster than I am, 
yet he will not leave the dew and the daisies and 
spring upward to greet the purpling east with a 
more blithe and jocund spirit than I possess. Gen- 
tlemen, I again repeat my thanks for this mark of 
your respect, and commend 3'ou to the enjoyment 
of a quiet and satisfactory repose. May God bless 
you all!"^ 

General Scott was not indorsed, the Whig 
party was neither applauded nor condemned, and 
his own purposes were carefully concealed. In his 
reference to the night and the stars there was a 
touch of sarcasm, which was repeated when he 
commended his hearers "to the enjoyment of a 
quiet and satisfactory repose." 

His career as a politician was ended, and in his 
place as Secretary of State there remained nothing 
of importance to be considered. 



* This speech was corrected by Mr. Webster and published in the 
Boston " Transcript," with a note that it had tlieretofore been printed 
in a mutilated form. 
5 



6o DANIEL WEBSTER 

He returned to Massachusetts, broken in spirit, 
if not altogether crushed. 

During his final illness in October, 1852, he dic- 
tated a letter to me in behalf of a neighbor, and the 
foreman on his farm at Marshfield, for whom he 
wished an appointment as justice of the peace. 
It was his last effort to express his thoughts or 
wishes upon paper. After the funeral of Mr. Web- 
ster, I received the letter with a note from Mr. 
Abbott, his Secretary, in which he said that Mr. 
Webster was unable to affix his signature to the 
communication. 

In the case of Mr. Webster, death did not de- 
stroy nor even qualify the physical marks of his 
intellectual greatness. When he lay in his coffin, 
under the elms at Marshfield, his form appeared as 
majestic as when he stood upon the rostrum in 
Faneuil Hall. His brow was massive, his eyes 
were large, deep sunken, and surrounded by a 
dark circle. His face was emaciated, but the en- 
graved lines of toil and care remained. He seemed 
a giant in repose. 

In Mr. Webster great power of argument and 
a lofty imagination were combined. In argument 
he spoke as one having a right to speak and to be 
heard, and, if he ever descended to personalities, it 
was only when he was under great provocation. 



THE STATESMAN. 6 1 

In many qualities, considered individually, Mr. 
Webster has been surpassed ; but in absolute great- 
ness of intellect, our search for his equal must be 
far and wide, not only among his contemporaries, 
but through the whole domain of histor3^ As Sec- 
retary of State he was not a distinguished nor even 
a successful administrator, and the only evidence of 
his originating or organizing faculty is contained 
in the crimes act, passed in the year 1825. There 
are incidents in his career which warrant the con- 
clusion that he had a dislike to the details of busi- 
ness, and there can be no doubt that in the later 
years of his life he rehed upon others even in the 
preparation of his arguments and speeches. 

At the time of the death of Judge Story, the 
statement was made that among his papers were 
seventy-five letters from Mr. Webster asking for 
suggestions and opinions upon legal points and 
topics. 

But given a case, a cause, a question, a subject 
for argument, and Mr. Webster was without a peer, 
whether he was called to the attack or the defense. 
His premiership does not rest upon any one speech 
or argument. His first great argument of histori- 
cal record Avas made in the Dartmouth College 
case, in the year 18 18. He Avas then in the thirty- 
seventh year of his age. He had already reached 
a high position as a lawyer, but it is manifest that 



62 DANIEL WEBSTER 

his great faculties did not mature at an early pe- 
riod. His college style of writing was vicious, and 
we may assume that his imagination and logical 
faculties w^ere not blended into harmony without 
the influence of time and great self-discipHne. 

Indeed, his Latin peroration in the Dartmouth 
College case could not be justified, nor would any 
advocate now venture upon a similar experiment 
in the presence of the Supreme Court of the United 
States. A long line of historical speeches and 
arguments followed, some of which contain pas- 
sages of enduring value as literary productions. 
They can be read as lessons in the schools, and 
recited by the youth of the land. There are con- 
stant changes in the public taste and judgment in 
literar}^ matters, and books that are read with 
avidity by one generation are wholly neglected by 
a succeeding generation ; but w^e can not imagine 
a time nor a condition of society when Webster's 
morning drum-beat passage will lose its charm. 
His description of a superior human intellect in 
his eulogy on Adams and JefTerson is so true, so 
graphic, and so grand, that it must always com- 
mand the admiration of the reader. Without ex- 
aggeration he has painted the scene of the mur- 
der of Captain White, and given voice to the 
thoughts and sentiments of the assassin, in manner 
and form so truthful and attractive that his words 



THE STATESMAN. 63 

must find a place in the living literature of future 
times. 

He created a speech for John Adams, which 
has deceived attentive readers and students. In 
the peroration to his speech in reply to Hayne, he 
sketched a picture of the civil war as it was seen 
by the succeeding generation. His fears led him 
to apprehend a dissolution of the Union in the event 
of a civil, sectional war, growing out of the system 
of slavery, but his hopes triumphed over his fears, 
and he closed with the utterance which has, as we 
trust, become imperishable truth : '' Liberty and 
union, now and forever, one and inseparable." 

Mr. Webster's emotional nature was strong, and, 
in his speech in support of General Harrison as 
the ''log -cabin candidate," he made a touching 
allusion to his birthplace and to the devotion of his 
father to his home and his country. 

By way of ridicule and reproach, the Demo- 
cratic party had styled General Harrison the *' log- 
cabin candidate." 

The Whig party accepted the designation, and 
it became the watchword of the canvass and the 
sign under which the party triumphed. Said Mr. 
Webster : 

'' Let him be the log-cabin candidate. What 
you say in scorn, we will shout with all our lungs ! " 



64 DANIEL WEBSTER 

He then turned to reflections suggested by his 
own experience : 

" It did not happen to me to be born in a log- 
cabin ; but my elder brothers and sisters were born 
in a log-cabin, raised amid the snow-drifts of New 
Hampshire, at a period so early that, when the 
smoke first rose from its rude chimney, and curled 
over the frozen hills, there was no similar evidence 
of a white man's habitation between it and the 
settlements on the rivers of Canada. ... I weep 
to think that none of those who inhabited it are 
now among the living ; and if ever I am ashamed 
of it, or if I ever fail in affectionate veneration for 
him who reared it, and defended it against savage 
violence and destruction, cherished all the domestic 
virtues beneath its roof, and, through the fire and 
blood of a seven years' Revolutionary War, shrunk 
from no danger, no toil, no sacrifices, to save his 
country, and to raise his children to a condition 
better than his own, may my name and the name 
of my posterity be blotted forever from the memory 
of mankind." 

These passages are not of the best of Mr. Web- 
ster's literary efforts, but they show the nature and 
depth of his attachment to his family and his 
country. 

In respect to Mr. Webster's powers of argu- 
ment as a close technical lawyer, he may be read 
at his best in the case of Ogden and Saunders. 



THE STATESMAN. 65 

Although the question was a constitutional ques- 
tion, the argument was within narrow limits. The 
Supreme Court had already decided that it was 
not competent for a State to pass a bankrupt law 
by which debtors should be discharged from pre- 
existing contracts. 

In the case of Ogden and Saunders, the court 
was called to decide whether a State could pass an 
act by which debtors could be relieved from con- 
tracts made subsequent to the date of the law. 

With great ingenuity of reasoning Mr. Webster 
contended that a State had no more power to im- 
pair a future contract than it had to impair a prior 
contract. The court, by a majority, held that the 
obligation of a contract made subsequent to the 
passage of the bankrupt law, was not impaired by 
a provision that the obligor might be discharged 
from his obligation, although he had not performed 
it. Chief-Justice Marshall and Justices Darrall and 
Story dissented. In support of this doctrine, final- 
ly accepted by the majority of the court, it was ar- 
gued at the bar that, upon the passage of a bank- 
rupt law by a State, the statute was imported into 
and became a part of all subsequent contracts. 

This theory was assailed by Mr. Webster in an 
unanswerable argument, but the court appears to 
have accepted the theory in substance, if not in 
terms. The leading opinion by the majority was 



66 DANIEL WEBSTER 

given by Mr. Justice Washington, and he relied 
upon a technical distinction between a contract and 
the obligation of a contract. 

He maintained that the contract was the work 
of the parties, but that the obligation of a con- 
tract was the creature of the law. This is an error 
both in law and ethics. The obligation of a con- 
tract is what is declared to be the mind of the par- 
ties as it is expressed in the contract. 

It is the province of the law to find, by judicial 
processes, the nature and extent of the obligation 
assumed by the parties, and then to enforce the 
performance of the obligation. The law creates 
nothing. It has no power to create either the obli- 
gation or the contract. 

Possibly the error of the court may be found in 
the original opinion, Sturgis vs. Crowninshield. 
In that case it was held that a State might pass a 
bankrupt law, subject to the condition that existing 
contracts could not be affected. 

The Constitution gave to Congress power to 
pass a tiniform system of bankruptcy ; and it also 
provided that a State should not pass any law im- 
pairing the obligation of contracts. 

As these provisions are of the same instrument, 
they should have been considered together, and a 
conclusion should have been reached which was 
reasonable and which would also give effect to the 



THE STATESMAN. 6/ 

language employed. The court might have said 
that the grant of power to Congress to establish a 
uniform system of bankruptcy was equivalent to 
the denial of the power to the States to estabHsh a 
State system. This construction was open to two 
objections, one of pubhc convenience and the other 
of constitutional interpretation. 

If Congress should neglect to enact and main- 
tain a uniform system of bankruptcy, as, in fact, it 
has neglected to enact and maintain such a system 
for much the larger part of our national exist- 
ence, the denial of any power to the States would 
have resulted in a serious and irremediable incon- 
venience. And next, inasmuch as the Constitution 
contains many inhibitions upon the powers of the 
States, and as the power to pass bankrupt acts is 
not among them, there was no tenable ground on 
which the court could add to the disabiHties of 
the States. 

The power of the court was thus limited to a 
definition of the bankrupt law which a State might 
pass. In the nature of our system there was one 
limitation to the powers of the States. A State 
bankrupt law could not be uniform inasmuch as 
the jurisdiction of a State is limited to its own citi- 
zens and to contracts made under its laws. 

It miofht therefore with reason have been held 
that the power granted by Congress to estabhsh a 



68 DANIEL WEBSTER 

uniform system of bankruptcy was designed to sup- 
plement the power reserved to the States. 

Again, it is not unreasonable to assume that the 
right of a State to enact a bankrupt law is the same 
in its nature and quality as the power granted to 
Congress, subject only to the necessary limitation 
that it can not be uniform. 

There are also two other considerations lead- 
ing to the same conclusion. In England, and in the 
States under the Confederation, it was a recognized 
power of a government to relieve a debtor from 
his debts under a bankrupt system. It is also to be 
observed that, by virtue of each of the three bank- 
rupt laws of the United States, the power to grant 
to debtors a full and free discharge from all their 
debts and obligations has been conferred upon the 
courts. In presence of these authorities, and upon 
a fair construction of the Constitution, the Supreme 
Court might have held that the grant of power 
to Congress was supplementary of the power ex- 
isting in the States, and that a bankrupt law en- 
acted by a State could operate upon its citizens as 
a bankrupt law enacted by Congress could oper- 
ate upon the citizens of the United States. 

A system of bankruptcy has an adequate foun- 
dation in public morals. A government should 
not require its citizens or subjects to attempt im- 
possibihties. It must happen often that men en- 



THE STATESMAN. 69 

g-aged in large undertakings become insolvent, and 
under such circumstances that it is practically im- 
possible for them to meet their liabilities in full 
either in the present or the future. 

In such a condition it is against public policy to 
hold such persons in semi-servitude. Their abili- 
ties and services have a value not to themselves 
mereW, put to the public also. 

In the case of Sturgis vs. Crowninshield (4 
Wheaton, 122), the court held that a State bank- 
rupt law which provided for the discharge of the 
debtor from the obligation of a contract existing at 
the time the statute was enacted, was unconstitu- 
tional, and upon the ground that it was a violation 
of the provision which denies to States the power 
to pass any law impairing the obligation of con- 
tracts. 

In the case of Ogden and Saunders the court 
was called to decide the question, Can a State, by 
virtue of a bankrupt law, relieve a debtor from the 
obligation of a contract made subsequent to the 
passage of the law? 

It seems an absurdity to maintain that the ex- 
isting laws in regard to the enforcement of con- 
tracts are incorporated into every contract be- 
tween individuals ; but in the case of Ogden and 
Saunders the court was driven to that conclusion, 
in substance, and the theory was announced in the 



70 DANIEL WEBSTER 

opinion of Mr. Justice Washington. Mr. Webster 
combated that view, and he was sustained by 
Chief-Justice Marshall. 

A law speaks in the present tense, and it does 
not speak until there is a case. Manifestly the 
obliofation of a contract does not arise from the 
statute, but from the intent of the parties of which 
the contract is the evidence. Consequently, the 
obligation is the same when there is a bankrupt 
law in force as when there is no such law ; and 
consequently, also, a law which sets aside or annuls 
or qualifies the obligation, necessarily impairs that 
obligation, and that without reference to the con- 
dition of the law when the contract was made. 
Otherwise parties and the court would search the 
statutes for the nature of a contract obligation in- 
stead of examining the contract itself. It might 
have been a reasonable construction for the court 
to have held that contracts, which in their nature 
and by usage, were subject to the operation of a 
bankrupt law were excepted out of the inhibition 
to States in regard to contracts. 

It is a noticeable feature of Mr. Webster's ca- 
reer that two of his most important forensic efforts 
were made in criminal causes, one for the defense 
and one for the prosecution. 

In 1817 he defended two young men named 
Kenniston, who were charged with assaulting and 



THE STATESMAN, yi 

robbing one Goodridge upon the highway between 
the town of Exeter, in the State of New Hamp- 
shire, and Newbury port, Massachusetts. Good- 
ridge was wounded in the hand by a pistol-shot, 
and he claimed that a considerable sum of money 
had been taken from him. By Mr. Webster's skill 
he was at once put upon the defensive. Persons 
charged with crimes of the nature of robbery, 
arson, or murder, are usually driven to account for 
their existence and doings at the time when the 
crime was committed. Goodridge was called to 
stand a similar test. He was four or four and a 
half hours on the way from Exeter to Newbury- 
port, when he could have driven over the road in 
two or two and a half hours. This delay Good- 
ridge was unable to explain. It was shown that 
money and papers were found in the house occu- 
pied by the accused, but only in places to which 
Goodridge had had access. 

The verdict by which the accused were acquit- 
ted was received by the public as a verdict of 
guilty against Goodridge. 

At the trial of the Knapps, in 1830, Mr. Web- 
ster, who appeared in behalf of the government, 
had occasion to refer to the Goodridge case. In 
that case, Judge William Prescott, father of the 
historian, was retained by the government to aid in 
the prosecution. When Mr. Webster appeared for 



72 DANIEL WEBSTER 

the government at the trial of the Knapps, the 
counsel for the accused complained of his presence, 
and said that he had been brought there to hurry 
the court and jury "against the law and beyond 
the evidence." In his long career at the bar, in 
Congress, and in general politics, he never allowed 
a personal imputation to rest for a day without re- 
ply and rebuke. He asserted himself in his reply 
to Hayne, in his defense against the attacks of 
Ingersoll, in his scornful denunciation of the reso- 
lutions of the Whig party of Massachusetts in 1842, 
and in his many letters and speeches in justifica- 
tion of his speech of the 7th of March, 1850. 

In reply to the aspersions cast upon him by the 
counsel for the Knapps, he indulged in deferential 
compliments to the court, assuring the members 
that if he made the attempt it would be impossible 
to carry them against the law ; and to the jury he 
said that they could '' not be hurried beyond the 
evidence." Turning to the counsel for the prison- 
ers, and referring to the Goodridge robbery, he 
said : 

'' I remember that the learned head of the Suf- 
folk bar, Mr. Prescott, came down in aid of the 
ofBcers of the government. This was regarded as 
neither strange nor improper. The counsel for the 
prisoners, in that case, contented themselves with 
answering his arguments, as far as they were able, 
instead of carping at his presence." 



THE STATESMAN, 73 

The murder of Captain White was committed 
by Richard Crowninshield, for a sum of money to 
be paid by Joseph J. Knapp, Jr. John Francis 
Knapp, his brother, was a party to the conspiracy. 
After the arrest of the parties, Joseph made a full 
confession to the Rev. Mr. Colman. When Crown- 
inshield heard of the confession, he committed 
suicide. He had declared previously that he 
would never submit himself to the degradation of 
a public execution. It may be true, also, that he 
thought that by his death his associates might es- 
cape conviction vipon the charge of murder. As 
the law then stood, the accessories could not be 
convicted until after the conviction of the princi- 
pal. Crowninshield was the principal and the 
Knapps were accessories. It was proved that 
Frank Knapp stood at the corner of Brown Street 
at the time of the murder, and at a point where he 
had a full view of the house. It was also proved 
that he met Crowninshield as he came from the 
house, that they walked together for a time, and 
that they were together when Crowninshield hid 
the club, v/ith which he had struck the fatal blow, 
under the steps of a church. 

It was the theory of the government that Frank 
Knapp Avas at Brov/n Street for the purpose of aid- 
ing Crowninshield in case of necessity, and upon 
that theory he was convicted as a principal. The 



74 



DANIEL WEBSTER 



final and more deliberate opinion is that he was not 
there for any such purpose. In an interview that 
he had with Crowninshield the preceding after- 
noon, Crowninshield had said that he did not feel 
like doing the work that night ; and the probability 
is, that there was no arrangement for aid on the part 
of Knapp, and that it was only a restless, intense 
interest in the matter that carried him to a place of 
observation. Joseph Knapp repudiated his confes- 
sion, which he had been led to believe would 
secure a commutation of punishment if not pardon 
for his crime, and he and his brother were con- 
victed and executed. 

The murder of Captain White was a tragedy 
as horrid as any recorded in play or history ; the 
suicide of Richard Crowninshield was a tragedy 
with a quality of heroism in it ; and there is some- 
thing which appeals to the better elements of our 
human nature in the final decision of Joseph 
Knapp, in refusing to save himself at the sacrifice 
of his brother's life. 

It is not an easy task to select one from Mr. 
Webster's many speeches, and with confidence as- 
sign pre-eminence to that one. With hesitation 
I give the first place to his argument in the trial 
of Frank Knapp. It presents six great features. 
First of all, his description of the murder scene. 
Next, his essay on the secret, which he closes in 



THE STATESMAN. 75 

these words : " It must be confessed, it will be con- 
fessed ; there is no refuge from confession but sui- 
cide, and suicide is confession." Then came his 
analysis of the evidence, which could not have 
been surpassed by Mr. Choate, who was the un- 
rivaled master of that branch of the profession. 
Then w^e have his summary of the evidence which 
he marshaled as the equivalent of the confession of 
Joseph, as it had been related by Mr. Colman, but 
which was of doubtful competency : 

" Compare what you learn from this confession 
with what you before knew. 

'' As to its being proposed by Joseph, was not 
that before known ? 

'' As to Richard being in the house alone, was 
not that known ? 

" As to the daggers, was not that known ? 

'' As to the time of the murder, was not that 
known ? 

" As to his being out that night, was not that 
known ? 

" As to his returning afterward, was not that 
known ? 

'' As to the club, was not that known ? " 

Then came his summary in propositions as de- 
duced from the mass of evidence : 

'* Gentlemen, I think you can not doubt there 
was a conspiracy formed for the purpose of com- 
6 



;6 DANIEL WEBSTER 

mitting this murder, and who the conspirators 
were. 

" That you can not doubt that the Crownin- 
shields and the Knapps were the parties in this con- 
spiracy. 

" That you can not doubt that the prisoner at 
the bar knew that the murder was to be done on 
the night of the 6th of April. 

" That you can not doubt that the murderers of 
Captain White were the suspicious persons seen in 
and about Brown Street on that night. 

" That you can not doubt that Richard Crown- 
inshield was the perpetrator of that crime. 

" That you can not doubt tliat the prisoner at 
the bar was in Brown Street on that night. 

'' If there, then it must be by agreement, to 
countenance, to aid the perpetrator. And if so, 
then he is guilty as principal." 

He then gave to the jury some solemn admo- 
nitions as to the obligations resting upon them. 
Among other observations, was this : 

*' There is no evil that we can not either face or 
fly from, but the consciousness of duty disregarded. 
A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipres- 
ent, like the Deity." 

The number of speeches that are equally sus- 
tained in all their parts is not large. The argu- 
ment in the Knapp trial is an exception in that re- 
spect to speeches generally and to Mr. Webster's 
especially. 



THE STATESMAN. yy 

In most of Mr. Webster's arguments and ora- 
tions there are spaces which are uninteresting to 
the reader, and in their deHvery they were unin- 
teresting to the hearer. Indeed, Mr. Webster was 
accustomed to pass over portions of his addresses 
as if they were of very trifling consequence. In 
the Knapp trial his whole nature was alive. The 
deed was a horrible one ; the public excitement was 
intense ; the circumstances connected with the dis- 
covery of the criminals were extraordinary ; and, 
finally, the name of a person, with whom Mr. Web- 
ster's family had relations had been mentioned in 
connection with the crime. 

These facts, one and all, tended to produce in 
Mr. Webster's mind a fixed purpose to secure the 
conviction of the real criminals. 

Mr. Webster's intellectual power was so great 
that he dominated over ordinary men, and juries 
were often unable to avoid the conclusions to which 
he invited them. 

In 1 82 1 he was retained to defend Judge Pres- 
cott before the Massachusetts Senate, upon articles 
of impeachment preferred by the House of Repre- 
sentatives. 

Much of his argument is devoted to an exami- 
nation of the evidence which related to fees and 
extra sessions of the court held by the request and 
at the cost of suitors. 



78 DANIEL WEBSTER 

The prosecution had its origin in personal hos- 
tility and political feeling. Prescott was convicted, 
and upon proofs which the Senate could not disre- 
gard ; but the proofs related to a state of facts 
which the House of Representatives might have 
passed over without formal notice. Mr. Webster's 
closing appeal to the Senate is embraced within 
the limits of twelve or fifteen hundred words, and 
it is a rare specimen of ethical, special pleading. 
It was without influence with the Senate, but it 
might have been effectual if it had been addressed 
to a jury. 

For twenty years Mr. Webster was the recog- 
nized head of the American bar, and yet he was 
not a learned man, nor a lawyer of long-continued 
experience in the profession. He was admitted to 
practice in 1805, and in 18 12 he was elected to 
Congress. From that time onward his professional 
career was broken and unsystematic. His pre- 
eminence was due to his intellectual supremacy, 
and to the adaptation of his faculties to a pursuit 
which finds its strongest support in the experience 
of ages and the purest human reason. 

The learning that is essential to the lawyer may 
be, and usually it is, useful to the statesman. It is 
also true that the practice of the profession in its 
higher departments is a fit preparation for success- 
ful work in the field of statesmanship. Previous to 



THE STATESMAN. 



79 



the year 1830, when Mr. Webster made his speech 
in reply to Hayne, he had served six years in Con- 
gress; he had been a leading member of the Massa- 
chusetts Constitutional Convention of 1820; he had 
discussed important questions of constitutional law 
before the Supreme Court of the United States ; 
and in every place and upon all questions he had 
shown overmastering ability ; but the support 
which he then gave to General Jackson, in his effort 
to suppress nullification, placed him at once and 
without debate in the first class of American states- 
men. From that time onward, until the day of his 
death, his only rivals were Clay and Calhoun. 
They were rivals in the opinion of the masses, but 
neither of them was his equal in intellectual power. 
And, aside from this consideration, the claim to 
statesmanship can not be made for Mr. Calhoun. 
He identified himself with the institution of slav- 
ery, and, subsequent to the close of the war with 
Great Britain, his policy never comprehended the 
Avhole country. To the section and to the interest 
that he represented he left a legacy of individual 
and pubUc suffering such as has not fallen to the 
lot of any people since the early Christians were 
hidden in the Catacombs or slaughtered in the 
amphitheatre of ancient Rome. 

The gift of statesmanship and the power of the 
statesman can not be denied to Mr. Clay. He was 



8o DANIEL WEBSTER 

an early and, in the main, a consistent advocate 
of the system of protection to American indus- 
try ; he supported a national bank ; he favored 
a plan of internal improvements, and the improve- 
ment of the rivers and harbors of the country, at 
the public expense. All these measures have, in 
principle, been accepted by the country. His 
policy is sustained by one of the great parties, and 
it receives a partial or qualified support from the 
other great party. It is, however, a singular com- 
ment upon Mr. Clay's influence that the State which 
he represented in the House, in the Senate, in the 
Cabinet, and upon a foreign mission, gives no sup- 
port to the great measures with which he was iden- 
tified during the whole of his public life. Mr. 
Clay's policy survives in that section of the country 
to which he did not belong and which he did not 
represent. 

Mr. Webster was known as the defender of the 
Constitution ; and that he was, for he well knew 
that the Union would stand as long as the Consti- 
tution was observed. The Union was the main 
thought of his speech in reply to Hayne, and he 
never failed to return to that thought in all his sub- 
sequent addresses. 

Calhoun's teachings tended to the destruction 
of the Union ; Webster's teachings tended to its 
preservation. 



THE STATESMAN, 8 1 

Upon Calhoun, more than upon any other man, 
rests the responsibility for the civil war. Mr. Web- 
ster strove to avert the evils of war, and, although 
his efforts were in vain, yet his speeches, and es- 
pecially his speech of 1830, educated a generation 
of men in the free States to the duty of maintaining 
the Constitution and the Union under it. 

In political sentiment the armies of the South 
represented Mr. Calhoun, and the armies of the 
North represented Mr. Webster. It is no doubt 
true, as to the North, that the physical facts were 
such that the scheme of the South would have been 
resisted if Mr. Webster had never spoken ; but it 
is equally true that Mr. Webster infused his spirit 
of attachment to the Union into the whole body of 
thinkers and readers in the Northern section of 
the country. 

When Mr. Webster made his speech of the 7th 
of March, 1850, he was far along in the sixty- 
eighth year of his age. He was a candidate for 
the presidency. His motives may not have been 
clear, even to himself. Ambition and a sense of 
duty may have been so blended that he did not 
realize how far his sense of duty was controlled 
by his wish to conciliate interests that theretofore 
had been hostile. As there were bodies of intelli- 
gent, patriotic persons in the North who shared 
his apprehensions and who supported his policy, 



82 DANIEL WEBSTER 

it is reasonable to assume that Mr. Webster acted 
upon liis judgment, and without reference to per- 
sonal considerations. 

The settlement of the northeastern boundary 
dispute, in 1842, was Mr. Webster's work. It was 
stated by Mr. Webster, in substance, that the Presi- 
dent left the business to him, and it is neither un- 
reasonable nor unjust to assume that Mr. Tyler 
was wholly indifferent to the question of territory, 
which was the real difficulty in the negotiations. 
As to Mr. Webster, he had to negotiate with three 
parties — Great Britain, Maine, and Massachusetts. 
Maine claimed jurisdiction, and Maine and Massa- 
chusetts claimed property in the lands, some of 
which were ceded to Great Britain. 

It can not be said of Mr. Webster that he origi- 
nated any important public policy, but in ability 
to maintain a policy that he had embraced he was 
far superior to his Whig associates. Mr. Webster 
was a conservative by nature, and hence it came 
to pass that he opposed the system of protection 
when commerce was the chief interest of New 
England ; and hence it was that he defended the 
system of protection when, by the policy of the 
Government, the capital of New England had been 
invested in manufactures. He had no respect for 
the claim that political economy is a cosmopolitan 
science, and hence he favored such legislation as 



THE STATESMAN. 83 

promised the best results to the people of the 
United States. In that he did not err. The max- 
im, '' Buy where you can buy cheapest and sell 
where you can sell dearest," is often a fallacy as a 
measure of public policy. It is the duty of a gov- 
ernment to favor that public policy which will se- 
cure to the laborer for each day's labor the largest 
return in the necessaries, conveniences, and com- 
forts of personal and family life. This the policy 
of protection has done. If we compare the labor- 
ing-classes, in their condition, since 1861, with 
their condition during the previous sixty years, we 
shall find that there has been a continuous im- 
provement. It can be said, also, that the laboring- 
classes of Europe have advanced in the last twen- 
ty-five years. The remark is true ; but the value 
of the remark is qualified by the fact that the 
improvement in Europe has been much less than 
in America, and by the important circumstances 
that the higher wages and better condition of 
American laborers have drawn to America large 
classes of farmers and artisans, thereby improv- 
ing the condition of those who remained at 
home. 

In diplomatic debate Mr. Webster has not been 
surpassed by any one who has held the office of 
Secretary of State, but the questions that he was 
called to consider were much inferior in impor- 



84 DANIEL WEBSTER 

tance to those which subsequently engaged the 
attention of Mr. Seward and Mr. Fish. 

Mr. Webster had a successful career, although, 
in his ambition to become President, he was disap- 
pointed. Such failures have been frequent ; and as 
the attainment of the office is not in all cases a 
success, so the failure to attain it is not in all cases 
a misfortune. He was at once the head of the 
American bar, the first English-speaking orator 
when his powers were at their maturity, and a 
recognized master in the list of American states- 
men. 

Mr. Webster was one of the last of a long line 
of American statesmen who, in the presence of 
slavery, strove to preserve liberty and the Union, 
and of that long line he was the greatest. For 
seventy years the thoughtful men of all parties 
were forced to consider the system of slavery 
in America, its relations to the Union, and its inher- 
ent antagonism to the principles on which the Gov- 
ernment was founded. Of all Mr. Webster's con- 
temporaries no one was more susceptible than he 
to these influences. By nature, by education, and 
upon his mature judgment, he was opposed to 
every form of human servitude. In 1820 he anath- 
ematized slavery in invectives fierce and strong as 
any which ever fell from the lips of Clarkson, Wil- 
berforce, Phillips, or Garrison. 



THE STATESMAN, 85 

No martyr was ever more devoted to his faith 
than was Mr. Webster to the Union of the States, 
and to its service he had contributed the best 
thoughts of his Hfe and the most brilliant passages 
of his orations. There can be no reasonable doubt 
that in 1850, to Mr. Webster's eye, the ways seemed 
to part. He thought that the Union was in peril, 
and that the further agitation of the slavery ques- 
tion would add to the peril. 

Slavery had given birth to one form of civiliza- 
tion, and freedom had given birth to another, and 
from the beginning the rule of the continent was 
the prize for which the parties had contended. 
Each succeeding census made clear and more clear 
the truth that time was on the side of liberty, and 
that a postponement of the struggle would be fatal 
to slavery. Hence each census from 1820 to i860, 
inclusive, with the exception of that of 1840, when 
the public mind was preoccupied with grave ques- 
tions of finance, wrought a crisis which menaced 
the public peace. On two occasions Mr. Webster 
met the peril and controlled it: First, in 1830, 
when he chose his place with General Jackson, 
and won imperishable fame on the floor of the 
Senate ; and again in 1850, when he secured a post- 
ponement of the contest, but at the sacrifice of his 
popularity and the ruin of his political fortunes. 

Mr. Webster claimed that the postponement of 



86 DANIEL WEBSTER 

the struggle would result in the supremacy of 
liberty and the preservation of the Union ; and 
it would be unjust to den}^ to him that foresight, 
statesmanship, and patriotism which the claim in- 
volves. It is true, indeed, that he did not antici- 
pate the immediate abolition of slavery. His 
thoughts and poHcy contemplated only peaceful 
measures — first, the limitation of the system, and 
then the gradual emancipation of the slaves. 

The compromise measures of 1850 gave the 
North ten years of time, and those years were 
years of preparation for the struggle of i860 and 
the war of the rebellion. 

In these ten years the public mind was edu- 
cated and the body of the people were prepared 
for the solution of the problem, whether by peace 
or war. If the contest had been precipitated m 
1850, the result might have been a division of the 
republic, and for the continent there would have 
been neither union nor liberty. 

It is not just to Mr. Webster to assume that he 
builded better than he knew. He builded as he 
knew. 

At the moment of his death his policy appeared 
to be acceptable to the country ; but, in less than 
two years, old compromises were violated, and it 
was then idle and in vain to make appeals in be- 
half of the new. In the review we must admit 



THE STATESMAN. 8/ 

that the processes of compromise from the forma- 
tion of the Constitution to the opening- of the re- 
bellion were calculated to preserve liberty and the 
Union, and, in the end, to render them one and in- 
separable. 

The incidental results were disagreeable, but 
they were also temporary. The end was freedom 
for the continent, and a continent included Avithin 
the limits of the Union. Thus liberty and the 
Union became one and inseparable. 

For twenty years Mr. Webster was the chief 
personage in Massachusetts, in New England, in 
the republic. In politics he had competitors ; 
but in diplomacy, in logical precision and force, 
in knowledge of the Constitution, in ability 
to deal with the gravest questions of law and 
statesmanship, in that genius by whose power he 
adorned whatever he said with an imagery as bold 
and magnificent as that of Milton and as true to 
nature as that of Shakespeare, he was without an 
equal or a rival. Wherever he stood, he was great ; 
and the demand Avhich he made for public consid- 
eration was based on that greatness. 

Mr. Webster was not an unconscious bearer of 
a royal intellect, and at the end he was forced to 
look with something of contempt upon that public 
sentiment which advanced inferior men and denied 
to him the chiefest honor of the republic. 



88 DANIEL WEBSTER 

When Mr. Webster spoke at Plymouth in 1820, 
when he spoke in the Senate ol 1830, there were 
men living w^ho had heard Burke, and Fox, and 
Sheridan ; and with them only, of all English-speak- 
ing orators, was he contrasted or compared. And 
if, for the moment, we can command the whole range 
of history, it is difficult to summon another orator 
who, in the Senate, and in the contest of 1830, could 
have met so completely the demand of the occa- 
sion, and justified his cause and the conduct of it 
to future ages. And if, again, for the moment we 
can command the whole range of history, can its 
ten great orators be named, and Mr. Webster be 
excluded from the list? Of those who have spoken 
the English language, he is inferior only to Burke ; 
and if the position which Macaulay assigns to 
Burke shall be sustained by the continuing judg- 
ment of mankind, then will Mr. Webster's country- 
men claim for him the second place on the page of 
universal history. 

An orator is not made by a single happy 
paragraph, nor born of one fortunate speech. 
He is to live in the public eye through a 
long period of time, and he must deal temper- 
ately, forcibly, persuasively, wisely, with a va- 
riety of questions touching the public interests 
or relating to the public welfare. All these 
conditions, and whatever else may be demanded 



THE STATESMAN. 89 

of the orator, were fully met in Mr. Webster's 
career. 

Mr. Webster was great in intellect, majestic in 
his person, great in his friendships, great in his 
enmities. 

His fame rests upon the intellectual forces that 
he possessed, and the nature and extent of the uses 
to which they were applied. A public man can 
not choose his career. He must deal with the 
questions of his own generation. It was Mr. 
Webster's fortune to be called to the study and 
discussion of a new Constitution framed for a new 
people. In the main his views have been sustained 
by judicial decisions and sanctioned by the course 
of political events. 

The virtue of a written constitution is in the 
interpretation given to it. Mr. Webster spoke for 
national life, for national power, for public honor, 
for public virtue. 

His views of the Constitution are to be consid- 
ered by all who shall study that Constitution and 
by all who are called to interpret it. He has thus 
become a worker in all the future of the republic. 

The two great orators of antiquity pleaded the 
cause of dying states, but it was Mr. Webster's 
better fortune to aid in giving form and character 
to a young and growing nation. 



PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

When Anson Burlingame was in this country 
the last time, he gave me an account of his life 
in China, his relations with the principal person- 
ages there, and said, finally : ^' When I die they 
will erect monuments and temples to my memory. 
However much I may now protest, they will do 
that." This, we are told, the people and Govern- 
ment of China have done. 

Gratitude to public benefactors is the common 
sentiment of mankind. It has found expression 
in every age ; it finds expression in every condi- 
tion of society. Monuments and temples seem to 
belong to the age of art rather than to the age 
of letters; but reflection teaches us that letters 
can not fully express the obligations of the learned 
even, to their chief benefactors, and only in a less 
degree can epitaphs, essays, and histories satisfy 
those w^ho have not the opportunity and culture 
to read and understand them. Moreover, monu- 
ments and temples in honor of the dead express 
the sentiments of their contemporaries v/ho sur- 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 91 

vive ; and the sentiments of contemporaries, when 
freed from passion, crystallize, usually, into opinion 
— the fixed, continuing opinion of mankind. Na- 
poleon must ever remain great ; Washington, good 
and great ; Burke, the first of English orators ; 
the younger Pitt, the chief of English statesmen ; 
and Henry VIII, a dark character in British his- 
tory. Time and reflection, the competing fame 
of new and illustrious men, the antiquarian and 
the critic, may modify the first-formed opinion, 
but seldom or never is it changed. The judg- 
ment rendered at the grave is a just judgment 
usually, but whether so or not it is not often 
disturbed. 

The fame of noble men is at once the most 
enduring and the most valuable public posses- 
sion. Of the distant past it is all of value that 
remains ; and of the recent past, the verdant 
fields, the villages, cities, and institutions of cult- 
ure and government are only monuments which 
men of that past have reared to their own fame. 
History is but the account of men : the earth, 
even, is but a mighty theatre on which human 
actors, great and small, have played their parts. 

Superior talents and favoring circumstances 
have secured for a few persons that special recog- 
nition called immortality ; that is, a knowledge of 

quahties . and actions attributed to an individual 

7 



92 



PRESIDENT LINCOLN 



whose name is preserved and transmitted, with that 
knowledge, from one generation to another. This 
immortality may be nothing to the dead, but the 
record furnishes examples and inspiring facts, 
especially for the young, by which they are en- 
couraged and stimulated to lead lives worthy of 
the illustrious men of the past. Herein is the 
value, and the chief value, of monuments, temples, 
histories, and panegyrics. If the highest use of 
sinners is, by their evil lives and bad examples, 
to keep saints to their duty, so it is also that the 
immortality accorded to those who were scourges 
rather than benefactors serves as a w^arning to 
men who strive to write their names upon the 
page of history. But the world really cherishes 
only the memory of those who were good as well 
as great, and hence it is the effort of panegyrists 
and hero-worshipers to place their idols in that 
attitude before mankind. The immortal lew are 
those who have identified themselves with con- 
tests and principles in which men of all times are 
interested ; or who have so expressed the wish or 
thought or purpose of mankind that their words 
both enlighten and satisfy the thoughtful of every 
age. When we consider how much is demanded 
of aspirants for lasting fame, we can understand 
the statement that that century is rich which adds 
more than one name to the short list of persons 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 



93 



who, in an historical sense, are immortal. In that 
sense those only are immortal whose fame passes 
beyond the country, beyond the race, beyond the 
language, beyond the century, and far outspreads 
all knowledge of the details of local and national 
history. 

The empire of Japan sent accredited to the 
United States, as its first minister resident, Ari 
Nori Mori, a young man of extraordinary ability, 
and then only twenty -four years of age. A few 
months before Japan Avas opened to intercourse 
with other nations, an elder brother of Mori lived 
for a time as a student at Jeddo, the capital of 
the empire. Upon his return to his home in the 
country he informed the family that he had heard 
of a new and distant nation of Avhich Washing- 
ton, the greatest and best of men, was the founder, 
savior, and father. Beyond this he had heard 
little of the country or the man, but this brief 
statement so inspired the younger brother to know 
more of the man and of the country, that he re- 
solved to leave his native land without delay, and 
in disobedience both to parental rule and public 
law. In this single fact we see what fame is in 
its largest sense, and we realize also the power 
of a single character to influence others, even 
where there is no tie of country, of language, of 
race, or any except that which gives unity to the 



94 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

whole family of man. If, then, the acquisition of 
fame in a large sense be so difficult, is it wise 
thus to present the subject to the young? May 
they not be deterred from those manly efforts 
w^hich are the prerequisites of success? I answer, 
Fame is not a proper object of human effort, and 
its pursuit is the most unwise of human under- 
takings. I am not now moralizing; I am trying 
to state the account as a worldly transaction. 
Moreover, there is a distinction between the fame 
of which I have spoken and contemporaneous 
recognition of one's capacity and fitness to per- 
form important private or public service. This 
is reputation rather than fame, and it may well 
be sought by honorable effort, and it should be 
prized by every one as an object of virtuous am- 
bition. Success, however, is not so often gained 
by direct effort as by careful, systematic, thorough 
preparation for duty. The world is not so loaded 
with genius, nor even with talent, that opportu- 
nities are wanting for all those who have capacity 
for public service. 

Mr. Bancroft gave voice to the considerate 
judgment of mankind when, in conversation, he 
said, " Beyond question. General Washington, in- 
tellectually, is the first of Americans." If this 
statement be open to question, the question springs 
from the limitation, for beyond doubt Washington 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 95 

is the first of Americans. His pre-eminence, his 
greatness, appear in the fact that his faculties and 
powers were so fully developed, so evenly ad- 
justed and nicely balanced that, in all the various 
and difficult duties of military and civil life, he 
never for an instant failed to meet the demand 
which his position and the attendant circum- 
stances made upon him. This was the opinion 
of his contemporaries. His pre-eminence was felt 
and recognized by the leaders of the savage tribes 
of America, by the most sagacious statesmen and 
wisest observers in foreign lands, and by all of 
his countrymen who were able to escape the in- 
fluence of passion and to consider passing events 
in the light of pure reason. 

It is the glory of Washington that he was the 
first great miHtary chief who did not exhibit the 
military spirit ; and in this he has given to his 
country an example and a rule of the highest 
value. The problem of republics is to develop 
military capacity without fostering the military 
spirit. This Washington did in himself, and this 
also his country has done. The zeal of the young 
men of the republic to enter the military service 
for the defense of the Union, and the satisfaction 
with which they accepted peace and returned to 
the employments of peace, all in obedience to the 
example of Washington, are his highest praise. 



PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

Washington was also an illustration of the 
axiom in government that the faculties and quali- 
ties essential to a military leader are the highest 
endowments of a ruler in time of peace; and the 
instincts of men are in harmony with this historic 
and philosophic truth. The time that has passed 
since the public career and natural Hfe of Wash- 
ington ended has not dimmed the luster of his 
fame, nor qualified in the least that general judg- 
ment on which he was raised to an equahty with 
the most renowned personages of ancient and 
modern times. 

With this estimate, not an unusual nor an exag- 
gerated estimate, I venture to claim for Abraham 
Lincoln the place next to Washington, whether we 
have regard to private character, to intellectual 
qualities, to public services, or to the weight of 
obligation laid upon the country and upon man- 
kind. Between Washington and Lincoln there 
were two full generations of men ; but, of them 
all, I see not one who can be compared with 
either. 

Submitting this opinion in advance of all evi- 
dence, I proceed to deal with those qualities, op- 
portunities, characteristics, and services on which 
Lincoln's claim rests for the broad and most en- 
during fame of w^hich I have spoken. We are 
attracted naturally by the career of a man who 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 97 

has passed from the humblest condition in early 
life to stations of honor and fame in maturer years. 
With Lincoln this space was the broadest possible 
in civilized life. His childhood was spent in a 
cabin upon a mud floor, and his youth and early 
manhood were checkered with more than the usual 
share of vicissitudes and disappointments. The 
chief blessing of his early life was his step-mother, 
Sally Bush, who, by her affectionate treatment and 
wuse conduct, did much to elevate the character 
of the class of women to which she belonged. His 
opportunities for training in the schools were few, 
and his hours of study were limited. The books 
that he could obtain were read and re-read, and a 
grammar and geometry were his constant com- 
panions for a time ; but his means of education 
bore no logical relation to the position he finally 
reached as a thinker, writer, and speaker. Lincoln 
is a witness for the man WilUam Shakespeare 
against those hostile and illogical critics who deny 
to him the authorship of the plays that bear his 
name, because they can not comprehend the way 
of reaching such results without the aid of books, 
teachers, and universities. When they show simi- 
lar results reached by the aid of books, teachers, 
and universities, or even by their aid chiefly, they 
will then have one fact tending to prove that 
such results can not be reached w^ithout such 



98 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

aids ; but in the absence of the proof we must 
accept Shakespeare and Lincohi, and confess our 
ignorance of the processes by which their great- 
ness was attained. 

Books, schools, and universities are helps to 
all, and they are needed by each and all in the 
ratio of the absence of natural capacity. By the 
processes of reason employed to show that Shake- 
speare did not write '' Hamlet," it may be proved 
that Lincoln did not compose the speech which 
he pronounced at Gettysburg. The parallel be- 
tween Shakespeare and Lincoln is good to this 
extent. The products of the pen of Lincoln im- 
ply a degree of culture in schools which he never 
had, and a process of reasoning upon that impli- 
cation leads to the conclusion that he was not 
the author of what bears his name. We know 
that this conclusion would be false, and we may 
therefore question the soundness of a similar pro- 
cess of reasoning in the case of Shakespeare. 

The world gives too much credit to self-made 
men. Not much is due to those who are so 
largely endowed by Nature that they at once 
outrun their contemporaries who are alwa3^s on 
the crutches of books and authorities, and but a 
little more is due to the larger class who, in iso- 
lation and privation, acquire the knowledge that 
is gained, usually, only in the schools. In the 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 99 

end, however, we judge the man as a whole and 
as a result, for there is no trustworthy analysis 
by which we can decide how much is due to 
Nature, how much to personal effort, and how 
much to circumstances. Of all the self-made men 
of America, Lincoln owed least to books, schools, 
and society. Washington owed much to these, 
and all his self-assertion, which was considerable, 
in society, in the army, and in civil affairs, was 
the assertion of a trained man. Lincoln asserted 
nothing but his capacity, when it was his duty, to 
decide w^hat was wise and what was right. He 
claimed nothing for himself, in his personal char- 
acter, in the nature of deference from others, and 
too little, perhaps, for the great office he held. 
The schools create nothing ; they only bring out 
what is ; but, as long as the mass of mankind 
think otherwise, an untrained person like Lincoln 
has an immense advantage over the scholar in 
the contest for immortality. In this particular, 
however, the instincts of men have a large share 
of w^isdom in them. When we speak of human 
greatness we mean natural, innate faculty and 
power. We distinguish the gift of God from the 
culture of the schools. The unlearned give the 
schools too much credit in the work of developing 
power and forming character; the learned, per- 
haps, give them too little. But, whether judged 



100 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

by the learned or the unlearned, Lincoln is the 
most commanding figure in the ranks of self-made 
men which America has yet produced. 

Mr. Lincoln possessed the almost divine fac- 
ulty of interpreting the will of the people with- 
out any expression by them. We often hear of 
the influence of the atmosphere of Washington 
upon the public men residing there. It never 
affected him. He was of all men most independ- 
ent of locality and social influences. He was 
wholly self-contained in all that concerned his 
opinions upon public questions and in all his 
judgments of the popular will. Conditions being 
given, he could anticipate the popular will and 
conduct. When the proceedings of the conven- 
tion of dissenting Republicans, which assembled 
at Cleveland in 1864, were mentioned to him and 
his opinion sought, he told the story of two fresh 
Irishmen who attempted to find a tree-toad that 
they heard in the forest, and how, after a fruitless 
hunt, one of them consoled himself and his com- 
panion with the expression, '' An' faith it was noth- 
ing but a noise." 

Mr. Lincoln's goodness of nature was bound- 
less. In childhood it showed itself in unfeigned 
aversion to every form of cruelty to animal life. 
When he was President it found expression in 
that memorable letter to Mrs. Bixby, of Boston, 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. loi 

who had given, irrevocably given, as was then 
supposed, five sons to the country. The letter 
was dated November 21, 1864, before the excite- 
ment of his second election was over: 

'' Dear Madam : I have been shown, in the 
files of the War Department, a statement, of the 
Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, that you are 
the mother of five sons who have died gloriously 
on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruit- 
less must be any words of mine which should 
attempt to beguile you from a loss so over- 
v/helming. But I can not refrain from tendering 
to you the consolation that may be found in the 
thanks of the republic they died to save. I pray 
that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish 
of your bereavement, and leave you only the cher- 
ished memory of the loved and lost, and the sol- 
emn pride that must be yours to have laid so 
costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. 
** Yours, very sincerely and respectfully, 

''Abraham Lincoln. 

" To Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Massachusetts." 

I imagine that all history and all literature 
may be searched, and in vain, for a funereal tribute 
so touching, so comprehensive, so fortunate in 
expression as this. 

If we have been moved to laughter by a sim- 



I02 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

pie story, and to tears by a pathetic strain, we 
can understand what Lincoln was to all, and espe- 
cially to the common people who were his fellows 
in everything except his greatness, when he moved, 
spoke, and acted among them. It would be a 
reflection upon the human race if men did not 
recognize something w^orthy of enduring fame in 
one whose kindness and sympathy were so com- 
prehensive as to include the insect on the one 
side and the noble, but bereaved, mother on the 
other. To the soldiers, General Thomas was " Old 
Holdfast," General Hooker was '' Fighting Joe," 
and Mr. Lincoln was " Father Abraham." These 
names were due to personal qualities which the 
soldiers observed, admired, and applauded. 

Mr. Lincoln was a mirth-making, genial, melan- 
choly man. By these characteristics he enlisted 
sympathy for himself at once, while his moral 
qualities and intellectual pre-eminence commanded 
respect. Mr. Lincoln's wit and mirth will give him 
a passport to the thoughts and hearts of millions 
who would take no interest in the sterner and 
more practical parts of his character. He used 
his faculties for mirth and wit to relieve the mel- 
ancholy of his life, to parry unwelcome inquiries, 
and, in the debates of pohtics and the bar, to 
worry his opponents. In debate he often so com- 
bined wit, satire, and statement, that his opponent 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 103 

at once appeared ridiculous and illogical. Mr. 
Douglas was often the victim of these sallies in 
the great debate for the Senate before the people 
of Illinois, and before the people of the country, 
in the year 1858. Douglas constantly asserted 
that abolition would be followed by amalgama- 
tion, and that the Republican party designed to 
repeal the law^s of Illinois which prohibited the 
marriage of blacks and whites. This was a for- 
midable appeal, to the prejudices of the people 
of Southern Illinois especially. '' I protest now 
and forever," said Lincoln, " against that counter- 
feit logic which presumes that because I did not 
want a negro woman for a slave, I do, necessari- 
ly, want her for a wife. I have never had the 
least apprehension that I or my friends would 
marry negroes if there were no law to keep them 
from it ; but, as Judge Douglas and his friends 
seem to be in great apprehension that they might, 
if there were no law to keep them from it, I give 
him the most solemn pledge that I will, to the 
very last, stand by the law of this State, which 
forbids the marrying of white people with ne- 
groes." Thus, in two sentences, did Mr. Lincoln 
overthrow Douglas in his logic, and render him 
ridiculous in his position. 

Douglas claimed special credit for the defeat 
of the Lecompton bill, although five sixths of the 



104 



PRESIDENT LINCOLN 



votes were given by the Republican party. Said 
Lincoln : '' Why is he entitled to more credit than 
others for the performance of that good act, unless 
there was something in the antecedents of the Re- 
publicans that might induce every one to expect 
them to join in that good work, and, at the same 
time, leading them to doubt that he would ? Does 
he place his superior claim to credit on the ground 
that he performed a good act which was never 
expected of him?" He then gave Mr. Douglas 
the benefit of a specific application of the parable 
of the lost sheep. 

In the last debate at Alton, October 15, 1858, 
Mr. Douglas proceeded to show that Buchanan 
was guilty of gross inconsistencies of position. 
Lincoln did not defend Buchanan, but, after he 
had stated the fact that Douglas had been on 
both sides of the Missouri Compromise, he added : 
'•'■ I want to know if Buchanan has not as much 
right to be inconsistent as Douglas has ? Has 
Douglas the exclusive right in this country of 
being 011 all sides of all questions ? Is nobody al- 
lowed that high privilege but himself? Is he to 
have an entire monopoly on that subject ? " 

There are three methods in debate of sustain- 
ing and enforcing opinions, and the faculty and 
facility of using these several methods are the 
tests of intellectual quality in writers and speak- 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 105 

ers. First, and lowest intellectually, are those who 
rely upon authority. They gather and marshal 
the sayings of their predecessors, and ask their 
hearers and readers to indorse the positions taken, 
not because they are reasonable and right under 
the process of demonstration, but because many 
persons in other times have thought them to be 
right and reasonable. As this is the work of the 
mere student, and does not imply either philoso- 
phy or the faculty of reasoning, those who rely 
exclusively upon authority are in the third class 
of intellectual men. Next, and of a much higher 
order, are the writers and speakers who state the 
facts of a case, apply settled principles to them, 
and by sound processes of reasoning maintain the 
positions taken. But high above all are the men 
who, by statement pure and simple, or by state- 
ment argumentative, carry conviction to thought- 
ful minds. Unquestionably Mr. Lincoln belongs 
to this class. Those who remember Douglas's 
theory in regard to " squatter sovereignty," which 
he sometimes dignified by calling it the " sacred 
right of self-government," will appreciate the force 
of Lincoln's statement of the scheme in these 
words : " The phrase, * sacred right of self-govern- 
ment,' though expressive of the only rightful basis 
of any government, was so perverted in the at- 
tempted use of it as to amount to just this: That 



I06 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

if any one man choose to enslave another^ no third 
man shall be allowed to object T 

In the field of argumentative statement, Mr. 
Webster, at the time of his death, had had no 
rival in America; but he has left nothing more 
exact, explicit, and convincing than this extract 
from Lincoln's first speech of the great debate. 
Here is a statement in less than twenty words, 
If any 07te man choose to enslave another, ?to third 
mail shall be allowed to object, which embodies the 
substance of the opinion of the Supreme Court 
of the United States in the case of Dred Scott, 
the theory of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and ex- 
poses the sophistr}^ which Douglas had woven 
into his arguments on '' squatter sovereignty." 

Douglas constantl}^ appealed to the prejudices 
of the people, and arrayed them against the doc- 
trine of negro equality. Lincoln, in reply, after 
asserting their equality under the Declaration of 
Independence, added, '' In the right to eat the 
bread, without the leave of anybody else, which 
his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal 
of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living 
man." Douglas often said — and he commanded 
the cheers of his supporters when he said it — " I 
do not care whether slavery is voted up or voted 
down." In his final speech at Alton, Lincoln re- 
viewed the histor}^ of the churches and of the 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 



107 



Government in connection with slavery, and he 
then asked : *' Is it not a false statesmanship that 
undertakes to build up a system of poHcy upon 
the basis of caring nothing about the very thing 
that everybody does care the most about?" He 
then, in the same speech, assailed Douglas's posi- 
tion in an argument, which is but a series of state- 
ments, and, as a whole, it is, in its logic and moral 
sentiment, the equal of anything in the language : 
" He may say he doesn't care whether an indif- 
ferent thing is voted up or down, but he must 
logically have a choice betw^een a right thing 
and a wrong thing. He contends that whatever 
community wants slaves has a right to have them. 
So they have, if it is not a wrong. But, if it is 
a wrong, he can not say people have a right to 
do wrong. He says that, upon the score of equal- 
ity, slaves should be allowed to go into a new 
Territory like other property. This is strictly 
logical, if there is no difference between it and 
other property. If it and other property are 
equal, his argument is entirely logical. But, if 
you insist that one is wrong and the other right, 
there is no use to institute a comparison between 
right and wrong. You may turn over everything 
in the Democratic poHcy, from beginning to end 
— whether in the shape it takes on the statute- 
book, in the shape it takes in the Dred Scott de- 



I08 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

cision, in the shape it takes in conversation, or in 
the shape it takes in short, maxim-like arguments 
— it everywhere carefully excludes the idea that 
there is anything wrong in it. That is the real 
issue. That is the issue that will continue in this 
country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas 
and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal strug- 
gle between these two principles, right and wrong, 
throughout the world. They are the two princi- 
ples that have stood face to face from the begin- 
ning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. 
The one is the common right of humanity, and 
the other the divine right of kings. It is the 
same principle in whatever shape it develops it- 
self. It is the same spirit that says, ' You work 
and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No mat- 
ter in what shape it comes, w^hether from the 
mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people 
of his own nation and live by the fruit of their 
labor, or from one race of men as an apology for 
enslaving another race, it is the same tj^rannical 
principle." 

To the Democrat w^ho admitted that slavery 
was a wrong, Mr. Lincoln addressed himself thus : 
*' You never treat it as a wrong. You must not 
say anything about it in the free States, because 
it is not here. You must not say anything about 
it in the slave States, because it is there. You 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 109 

must not say anything about it in the pulpit, be- 
cause that is religion, and has nothing to do with 
it. You must not say anything about it in poli- 
tics, because that will disturb the security of my 
place. There is no place to talk about it as being 
wrong, although you say yourself it is a wrong." 
Among the rude people with whom Lincoln 
passed his youth and early manhood, his personal 
courage was often tested, and usually in support 
of the rights or pretensions of others, or in behalf 
of the weak, the wronged, or the dependent. In 
later years his moral characteristics were subjected 
to tests equally severe. Mr. Lincoln was not an 
agitator like Garrison, Phillips, and O'Connell, and 
as a reformer he belonged to the class of moder- 
ate men, such as Peel and Gladstone ; but in no 
condition did he ever confound right with wrong, 
or speak of injustice with bated breath. His first 
printed paper was a plea for temperance ; and his 
second, a eulogy upon the Union. His positive, 
personal hostility to slavery goes back to the year 
1 83 1, when he arrived at New Orleans as a la- 
borer upon a flat-boat. '' There it was," says 
Hanks, his companion, '* we saw negroes chained, 
maltreated, w^hipped, and scourged. Lincoln saw 
it, said nothing much, was silent from feeling, was 
sad, looked bad, felt bad, was thoughtful and ab- 
stracted. I can sa}^, knowing it, that it was on 



no PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

this trip that he formed his opinion of slavery. 
It run its iron in him then and there, May, 1831. 
I have heard him say so often and often." In 
1850, he said to his partner, Mr. Stuart: ''The 
time will come when we must all be Democrats 
or abolitionists. When that time comes, my mind 
is made up. The slavery question can't be com- 
promised." In 1855, he said: ''Our progress in 
degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As 
a nation we began by declaring that all men are 
created equal. We now practically read it all men 
are created equal except negroes^ In his Ottawa 
speech of 1858, he read an extract from his speech 
at Peoria, made in 1854, in these words : " This 
declared indifference, but as I must think real zeal 
for the spread of slavery, I can not but hate. I 
hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slav- 
ery itself. I hate it because it deprives our re- 
publican example of its just influence in the world, 
enables the enemies of free institutions with plausi- 
bility to taunt us as hypocrites, causes the real 
friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and, 
especially, because it forces so many really good 
men among ourselves into an open war with the 
very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criti- 
cising the Declaration of Independence, and in- 
sisting that there is no right principle of action 
but self-interest." 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. m 

These extracts prepare the reader for the most 
important utterance by Mr. Lincoln previous to 
his elevation to the presidency. 

The Republican Convention of the State of 
Illinois met at Springfield, June 17, 1858, and 
nominated Mr. Lincoln for the seat in the Senate 
of the United States then held by Stephen A. 
Douglas. This action was expected, and Mr. 
Lincoln had prepared himself to accept the nomi- 
nation in a speech Avhich he foresaw would be 
the pivot of the debate with Judge Douglas. That 
speech he submitted to a council of at least twelve 
of his personal and political friends, all of whom 
advised him to omit or to change materially the 
first paragraph. This Ah*. Lincoln refused to do, 
even when challenged by the opinion that it 
would cost him his seat in the Senate. It did 
cost him his seat in the Senate, but the speech 
would have been delivered had he foreseen that 
it would cost him much more. After its delivery, 
and while the canvass was going on, he said to 
his friends ; '' You may think that speech was a 
mistake, but I never have believed it was, and 
you will see the day when you will consider it 
was the wisest thing I ever said. If I had to 
draw a pen across and erase my whole life from 
existence, and I had one poor gift or choice left 
as to what I should save from the wreck, I should 



1 1 2 PRESIDENT LIXCOLN 

choose that speech, and leave it to the world un- 
erased." These are the words that he prized so 
highly, and which, for the time, cost him so much : 
'' If we could first know where we are and whither 
we are tending, we could better judge what to 
do and how to do it. We are now far into the 
fifth year since a policy was initiated with the 
avowed object and confident promise of putting 
an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation 
of that policy, that agitation has not only not 
ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my 
opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have 
been reached and passed. ' A house divided 
against itself can not stand.' I believe this Gov- 
ernment can not endure permanently, half slave 
and half free. I do not expect the Union to be 
dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but 
I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will 
become all one thing or all the other; either the 
opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread 
of it, and place it where the public mind shall 
rest in the belief that it is in the course of ulti- 
mate extinction, or its advocates will push it for- 
ward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the 
States, old as well as new, North as well as South." 
To the pro-slavery, sensitive, prejudiced, Union- 
saving classes it was not difficult to interpret this 
paragraph in a highly offensive sense. The phrase, 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 



113 



" A house divided against itself can not stand," was 
interpreted as a declaration against the Union. It 
was, in fact, a declaration of the existence of the 
irrepressible conflict. 

Douglas availed himself of the opportunity to 
excite the prejudices of the people, and thus se- 
cured his re-election to the Senate. Mr. Lincoln 
had a higher object : he sought to change public 
sentiment. No man ever lived who better under- 
stood the means of affecting public sentiment, or 
more highly appreciated its power and impor- 
tance. At Ottawa he said : " In this and like com- 
munities public sentiment is everything. With 
public sentiment nothing can fail ; without it noth- 
ing can succeed. Consequently, he who molds 
public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts 
statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes stat- 
utes and decisions possible or impossible to be 
executed." 

I have quoted thus freely from Mr. Lincoln, 
that we may appreciate his moral courage ; that 
we may rest in the opinion that he was an early, 
constant, consistent advocate of human liberty, 
and that we might enjoy the charm of his tran- 
scendently clear thought, convincing logic, and 
power of statement. When he became President, 
and w^as called to bear the chief burden in the 
struggle for liberty and the Union, he was never 



114 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

dismayed by the condition of public affairs, nor 
disturbed by apprehensions for his personal safety. 
He was like a soldier in the field, enhsted for 
duty, and danger was, of course, incident to it. 
I was alone with Mr. Lincoln more than two 
hours of the Sunday next after Pope's defeat in 
August, 1862. That was the darkest day of the 
sad years of the war. McClellan had failed upon 
the Peninsula. Pope's army, re-enforced by the 
remains of the Army of the Peninsula, had been 
driven within the fortifications of Washington. 
Our losses of men had been enormous, but most 
serious of all was the loss of' confidence in com- 
manders. The army did not confide in Pope, and 
the authorities did not confide in McClellan. In 
that crisis Lincoln surrendered his own judgment 
to the opinion of the army, and re-established 
McClellan in command. When the business to 
which I had been summoned by the President 
was over — strange business for the time : the ap- 
pointment of assessors and collectors of internal 
revenue — he was kind enough to ask my opinion 
as to the command of the army. The way was 
thus opened for conversation, and for me to say 
at the end that I thought our success depended 
upon the emancipation of the slaves. To this he 
said : " You would not have it done now, would 
you? Must we not wait for something like a 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR, 



115 



victory?" This was the second and most explicit 
intimation to me of his purpose in regard to slav- 
ery. In the preceding July or early in August, 
at an interview upon business connected with my 
official duties, he said, '' Let me read two letters," 
and taking them from a pigeon-hole over his table 
he proceeded at once to do what he had proposed. 
I have not seen the letters in print. His cor- 
respondent w^as a gentleman in Louisiana, who 
claimed to be a Union man. He tendered his 
advice to the President in regard to the reorgan- 
ization of that State, and he labored zealously to 
impress upon him the dangers and evils of eman- 
cipation. The reply of the President is only im- 
portant from the fact that when he came to that 
part of his correspondent's letter he used this ex- 
pression : " You must not expect me to give up 
this Government without playing my last card." 
Emancipation was his last card. He waited for 
the time when two facts or events should coincide. 
Mr. Lincoln was as devoted to the Constitution 
as was ever Mr. Webster. In his view, a military 
necessity was the only ground on which the over- 
throw of slavery in the States could be justified. 
Next he waited for a public sentiment in the 
loyal States not only demanding emancipation but 
giving full assurance that the act would be sus- 
tained to the end. As for himself, I can not doubt 



Il6 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

that he had contemplated the policy of eman- 
cipation lor many months, and anticipated the 
time when he should adopt it. At his inter- 
view with the Chicago clergy he stated the reas- 
ons against emancipation, and stated them so for- 
cibly that the clergy were not prepared to an- 
swer them ; but the accredited account of the 
interview contains conclusive proof that Mr. 
Lincoln then contemplated issuing the procla- 
mation. 

It may be remembered by the reader that in 
the political campaign of 1862, a prominent leader 
of the People's part}^ the late Judge Joel Parker, of 
Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in public that Mr. 
Lincoln issued the proclamation under the influ- 
ence of the loyal Governors who met at Altoona 
in September of that year. As I was about to 
leave Washington in the month of October to 
take part in the canvass, I mentioned to the Presi- 
dent the fact that such a statement had been 
made. He at once said : '' I never thought of the 
meeting of the Governors. The truth is just this: 
When Lee came over the river, I made a resolu- 
tion that if McClellan drove him back 1 would 
send the proclamation after him. The battle of 
Antietam was fought Wednesday, and until Sat- 
urday I could not find out whether we had 
gained a victory or lost a battle. It was then too 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. n; 

late to issue the proclamation that day, and the 
fact is I fixed it up a little Sunday, and Monday 
I let them have it." 

Men will probably entertain different opinions 
of one part of Lincoln's character. He not only 
possessed the apparently innate faculty of com- 
prehending the tendency, purposes, and opinions 
of masses of men, but he observed and measured 
with accuracy the peculiarities of individuals who 
were about him, and made those individuals, some- 
times through their peculiarities and sometimes in 
spite of them, the instruments or agents of his 
own views. Of the three chief men in his Cabi- 
net, Seward, Chase, and Stanton, Mr. Stanton was 
the only one who never thus yielded to this power 
of the President. The reason was creditable alike 
to the President and to Mr. Stanton. Mr. Stanton 
was frank and fearless in his office, devoted to 
duty, destitute of ambition, and uncompromising 
in his views touching emancipation and the sup- 
pression of the rebellion. The popular sentiment 
of the day made no impression upon him. He 
was always ready for every forward movement, 
and he could never be reconciled to a backward 
step, either in the field or the Cabinet. It is no 
injustice to Mr. Seward and Mr. Chase to say that 
they had ambitions which, under some circum- 
stances, might disturb the judgment. These am- 



Il8 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

bitions and their tendencies could not escape the 
notice of the President. 

Mr. Lincoln was indifferent to those matters of 
government that were relatively unimportant ; but 
he devoted himself with conscientious diligence 
to the graver questions and topics of official duty, 
and, in the first months of his administration, at 
a moment of supreme peril, by his pre-eminent 
wisdom, of which there remains indubitable proof, 
he saved the country from a foreign war. I refer 
to the letter of instruction to Mr. Adams, written 
in May, 1861, and relating to the proclamation of 
the Government of Great Britain recognizing the 
belligerent character of the Confederate States. 

In the greatest exigencies his power of judg- 
ing immediately and wisely did not desert him. 
On the eve of the battle of Gettysburg, General 
Hooker resigned the command of the army. This 
act was a painful, a terrible surprise to Mr. Stan- 
ton and the President. Mr. Stanton's account to 
me was this : *' When I received the dispatch my 
heart sank within me, and I was more depressed 
than at any other moment of the war. I could not 
say that any other officer knew General Hooker's 
plans, or the position even of the various divisions 
of the army. I sent for the President to come 
to the War Office at once. It was in the even- 
ing, but the President soon appeared. I handed 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 



119 



him the dispatch. As he read it his face became 
hke lead. I said, ' What shall be done ? ' He 
replied, instantly, 'Accept his resignation.'" In 
secret, and without consulting any one else, the 
President and Secretary of War canvassed the 
merits of the various officers of the army, and 
decided to place General Meade in command. Of 
this decision General Meade was informed by a 
dispatch sent by a special messenger, who reached 
his quarters before the break of day the next 
morning. It may be interesting to know the 
grounds on which the President decided to pro- 
mote General Meade. 

First : That he was a good soldier, if not a 
brilliant one. 

Second : That he was a native of Pennsylvania, 
and that State at that moment was the battle-field 
of the Union. 

Third : The President apprehended that a de- 
mand would be made for the restoration of Gen- 
eral McClellan, and this he desired to prevent by 
the selection of a man who represented the same 
political opinions in the army and in the country. 

Mr. Lincoln entertained advanced thoughts and 
opinions upon all worthy topics of public con- 
cern ; indeed, his opinions were in advance, usu- 
ally, of his acts as a public man. This is but 
another mode of stating the truth, that he pos- 



I20 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

sessed the faculty of foreseeing the course of pub- 
lic opinion — a faculty essential to statesmen in 
popular governments. 

In 1853, in a campaign letter, he said : *' I go 
for all sharing the privileges of government who 
assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go 
for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage 
who pay taxes or bear arms, by no means exclud- 
ing females." In 1854, he said : " Labor is prior 
to and independent of capital. Capital is only 
the fruit of labor, and could never have existed 
if labor had not first existed. Labor is the sup- 
port of capital, and deserves much the higher 
consideration." In April of the same year, he 
said : '' I am naturally antislavery. If slavery is 
not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remem- 
ber when I did not so think and feel." In his 
last public utterance he declared himself in favor 
of extending the elective franchise to colored 
men. 

Thus he died, without one limitation in his 
expressed opinions of the rights of men which 
the historian or eulogist will desire to suppress 
or to qualify. It is to be said further of this 
many-sided man, and most opulent in natural 
resources, that he takes rank with the first logi- 
cians and orators of every age. His mastery over 
Douglas in the debate of 1858 was complete. 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 121 

While President, and by successive letters, he 
effectually repelled the attacks and silenced the 
criticisms of the New York Committee, of which 
Erastus Corning was the head, that condemned 
illegal arrests and the suspension of the writ of 
habeas corpus; of the Union Committee of the 
State of Illinois, that proposed to save the Union 
if slavery could be saved with it ; of the Demo- 
cratic Convention of the State of Ohio, that de- 
nounced the arrest of Vallandingham ; and of 
Horace Greeley himself, when he complained of 
the pohcy the President seemed to be pursuing 
on the subject of emancipation. 

As I approach my conclusion, I ask a judg- 
ment upon Mr. Lincoln, not as a competitor with 
Mr. Douglas for a seat in the Senate of the United 
States, but as a competitor for fame with the first 
orators of this and other countries, of this and 
other ages. 

In support of this view I quote the closing 
paragraph of his first speech in the canvass of 
1858 : " Our cause, then, must be intrusted to 
and conducted by its own undoubted friends, 
those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in 
the work, who do care for the result. Two years 
ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over 
thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this 
under the single impulse of resistance to a com- 



122 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

mon danger, with every external circumstance 
against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hos- 
tile elements, we gathered from the four winds, 
and formed and fought the battle through, under 
the constant, hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and 
pampered enemy. Did we brave all then to fal- 
ter now ? Now, when that same enemy is waver- 
ing, dissevered, and belligerent ? The result is 
not doubtful. We shall not fail ; if we stand firm 
we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate 
or mistakes delay it, but sooner or later the vic- 
tory is sure to come." We all remember his 
simple, earnest, persuasive appeals to the South, 
in his first inaugural address. At the end he 
says : '' I am loath to close. We are not enemies, 
but friends. We must not be enemies. Though 
passion may have strained, it must not break our 
bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory, 
stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave 
to every living heart and hearthstone all over this 
broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union 
when again touched, as surely they will be, by 
the better angels of our nature." There is noth- 
ing elsewhere in our literature of plaintive en- 
treaty to be compared with this. It combines the 
eloquence of the orator with the imager}^ and 
inspiration of the poet. But the three great pa- 
pers on which Lincoln's fame will be carried 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 123 

along the ages are the proclamation of emancipa- 
tion, his oration at Gettysburg, and his second 
inaugural address. The oration ranks with the 
noblest productions of antiquity, and rivals the 
fmest passages of Grattan, Burke, or Webster. 
This is not the opinion of Americans only, but 
of the cultivated in other countries, whose judg- 
ment anticipates the judgment of posterity. 

When we consider the place, the occasion, the 
man, and, more than all, when we consider the 
oration itself, can wx doubt that it ranks with 
the first of American classics ? That literature is 
immortal which commands a permanent place in 
the schools of a country, and is there any com^ 
position more certain of that destiny than Lin- 
coln's oration at Gettysburg ? '' Fourscore and 
seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon 
this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty 
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are 
created equal. Now, we are engaged in a great 
civil war, testing whether that nation, or any 
nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long 
endure. We are met on a great battle-field of 
that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of 
it as the final resting-place of those who have 
given their lives that that nation might live. It 
is altogether fitting and proper that we should 
do this. But in a larger sense we can not dedi- 



124 



PRESIDENT LINCOLN 



cate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow 
this ground. The brave men, living and dead, 
who struggled here, have consecrated it far above 
our power to add or detract. The world will 
little note nor long remember Avhat we say here, 
but it can never forget what they did here. It 
is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here 
to the unfinished work that they have thus far so 
nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here 
dedicated to the great task remaining before us ; 
that from these honored dead we take increased 
devotion to the cause for which they here gave 
the last full measure of devotion ; that we here 
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died 
in vain ; that the nation shall, under God, have a 
new birth of freedom, and that government of the 
people, by the people, for the people, shall not 
perish from the earth." But if all that Lincoln 
said and was should fail to carry his name and 
character to future ages, the emancipation of four 
million human beings by his single official act is 
a passport to all of immortality that earth can 
give. There is no other individual act performed 
by any person on this continent that can be com- 
pared with it. The Declaration of Independence, 
the Constitution, were each the w^ork of bodies 
of men. The Proclamation of Emancipation in 
this respect stands alone. The responsibility w^as 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 



125 



wholly upon Lincoln ; the glory is chiefly his. 
No one can now say whether the Declaration of 
Independence, or the Constitution of the United 
States, or the Proclamation of Emancipation was 
the highest, best gift to the country and to man- 
kind. With the curse of slavery in America there 
was no hope for republican institutions in other 
countries. In the presence of slavery the Decla- 
ration of Independence had lost its power; prac- 
tically, it had become a lie. In the presence of 
slavery we were to the rest of mankind and to 
ourselves a nation of hypocrites. The gift of free- 
dom to four million negroes was not more valu- 
able to them than to us ; and not more valuable 
to us than to the friends of liberty in other parts 
of the world. 

In these days, when politicians and parties are 
odious to many thoughtful and earnest-minded 
persons, it may not be amiss to look at Mr. Lin- 
coln as a politician and partisan. These he was, 
first of all and always. He had political convic- 
tions that were ineradicable, and they were wholly 
partisan. As the rebellion became formidable, the 
Republican party became the party of the Union ; 
and, as the party of the Union, with Mr. Lincoln 
at its head, it was from first to last the only 
political organization in the country that consist- 
ently, persistentl}^ and without qualification of 



126 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

purpose, met, and in the end successfully met, 
every demand of the enemies of the GoA^ernment, 
whether proffered in diplomatic notes or on the 
field of battle. He struggled first for the Union, 
and then for the overthrow of slavery as the only 
formidable enemy of the Union. These were his 
tests of political fellowship, and he carefully ex- 
cluded from place every man who could not bear 
them. He accepted the great and most manifest 
lesson of free governments, that every wise and 
vigorous administration represents the majority 
party, and that the best days of every free country 
are those days wlien a party takes and wields 
power by a popular verdict, and guards itself at 
every step against the assaults of a scrutinizing 
and vigorous opposition. He accepted the essen- 
tial truths that a free government is a political 
organization, and that the political opinions of 
those intrusted with its administration, as to what 
the Government should be and do, are of more 
consequence to the country than even their knowl- 
edge of orthography and etymology. As a con- 
sequence, he accepted the proposition that every 
place of executive discretion or of eminent ad- 
ministrative power should be occupied by the 
friends of the Government. This, not because the 
spoils belong to the victors, but for the elevated 
and sufficient reason that the chief offices of state 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR, 127 

are instrumentalities and agencies by wliich the 
majority carry out their principles, perfect their 
measures, and render their policy acceptable to 
the country ; and also for the further reason 
that in case of failure the administration is with- 
out excuse. The entire public policy of Mr. Lin- 
coln was the natural outgrowth of his political 
principles as a RepubHcan. Through the influ- 
ence of experience and the exercise of power the 
politician ripened into the statesman, but the ideas, 
principles, and purposes of the statesman were the 
ideas, principles, and purposes of the partisan 
politician. In prosecuting the war for the Union, 
in the steps taken for the emancipation of the 
slaves, Mr. Lincoln appeared to follow rather than 
to lead the Republican party. But his own views 
were more advanced usually than those of his 
party, and he waited patiently and confidently for 
the healthy movements of public sentiment which 
he well knew were in the right direction. No 
man w^as ever more firmly or consistently the 
representative of a party than was Mr. Lincoln, 
and his acknowledged greatness is due, first, 
to the wisdom and justice of the principles 
and measures of the political party that he 
represented ; and, secondly, to his fidelity in 
every hour of his administration, and in every 
crisis of public affairs, to the principles, ideas, 



128 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

and measures of the party with which he was 
identified. 

Having seen Mr. Lincoln as frontiersman, poli- 
tician, lawyer, stump-speaker, orator, statesman, 
and patriot, it only remains for us to contemplate 
him as an historical personage. First of all, it is 
to be said that Mr. Lincoln is next in fame to 
Washington, and it is by no means certain that 
history Avill not assign to Lincoln an equal place, 
and this Avithout any qualification of the claims or 
disparagement in any way of the virtues of the 
Father of his country. The measure of Wash- 
ington's fame is full ; but for many centuries, and 
over vast spaces of the globe, and among all peo- 
ples passing from barbarism or semi-servitude to 
civilization and freedom, Mr. Lincoln will be hailed 
as the Liberator. In all governments struggling 
for existence, his example will be a guide and a 
help. Neither the gift of prophecy nor the qual- 
ity of imagination is needed to forecast the steady 
growth of Lincoln's fame. At the close of the 
twentieth century the United States will contain 
one hundred and fifty or two hundred million 
inhabitants, and from one fourth to one third of 
the population of the globe will then use the Eng- 
lish language. To all these and to all their de- 
scendants Mr. Lincoln will be one of the three 
great characters of American history, while to the 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR, 129 

unnumbered millions of the negro race in the 
United States, in Africa, in South America, and 
in the islands of the sea, he will be the great 
figure of all ages and of every nation. His fame 
will increase and spread with the knowledge of 
republican institutions, with the expansion and 
power of the English-speaking race, and with the 
deeper respect which civilization will create for 
whatever is attractive in personal character, wise 
in the administration of public affairs, just in pol- 
icy, or liberal and comprehensive in the exercise 
of constitutional and extra-constitutional powers. 

It was but an inadequate recognition of the 
character and services of Mr. Lincoln that was 
made by the patriots of Rome when they chose 
a fragment from the wall of Servius Tullius and 
sent it to the President with this inscription : " To 
Abraham Lincoln, President for the second time 
of the American Republic, citizens of Rome pre- 
sent this stone, from the wall of Servius Tullius, 
by which the memory of each of those brave as- 
serters of Liberty may be associated. Anno 1865." 
The final and nobler tribute to Mr. Lincoln is yet 
to be rendered, not by a single city nor by the 
patriots of a single country. A knowledge of his 
life and character is to be carried by civilization 
into every nation and to every people. Under 
him, and largely through his acts and influence, 



130 PRESIDENT LINCOLN, j, 

justice became the vital force of the republic. 
The war established our power. The policy of 
Mr. Lincoln and those who acted with him se- 
cured the reign of justice ultimately in our do- 
mestic affairs. Possessing power and exhibiting 
justice, the nation should pursue a policy of peace. 
Power, Justice, and Peace ; in them is the glory 
of the regenerated republic. 



PRESIDENT LINCOLN.* 

The nation is bowed down to-day under the 
weight of a solemn and appalling sorrow, such as 
never before rested upon a great people. It is not 
the presence of death merely ; with that we have 
become familiar. It is not the loss of a leader only 
that we mourn, nor of a statesman who had exhib- 
ited wisdom in great trials, in vast enterprises of 
war, and in delicate negotiations for the preser- 
vation of peace with foreign countries ; but of a 
twice-chosen and twice-ordained ruler, in whom 
these great qualities were found, and to which 
were added the personal courage of the soldier 
and the moral heroism of the Christian. 

Judged by this generation in other lands, and 
by other generations in future times, Abraham 
Lincoln will be esteemed as the wisest of rulers 
and the most fortunate of men. To him and to his 
fame the manner of his death is nothing ; to the 
country and to the whole civilized family of man, it 

* Eulogy delivered before the city government of Lowell, Massa- 
chusetts, April 19, 1865, 



132 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

is the most appalling of tragical events. The rising 
sun of the day following that night of unexam- 
pled crime, revealed to us the nation's loss ; but, 
stunned by the shock, the people were unable to 
comprehend the magnitude of the calamity. As 
the last rays of the setting sun ghded into the 
calm twilight of evening, the continent was stilled 
into silence by its horror of the crime, and its 
sense of the greatness of the loss sustained. 

To the human eye, Abraham Lincoln seems to 
have been specially designated by Divine Providence 
for the performance of a great work. His origin 
was humble, his means of education stinted. He was 
without wealth, and he did not enjoy the support 
of influential friends. Much the larger part of his 
life was spent in private pursuits, and he never ex- 
hibited even the common human desire for pubHc 
employment, leadership, and fame. His ambition 
concerning the great office that he held was fully 
satisfied ; and the triumph of his moderate and 
reasonable expectations was not even marred by 
the untimely and bloody hand of the assassin. 
During the canvass of 1864, and with the modesty 
of a child, he said : '' I can not say that I wish to 
perform the duties of President for four years 
more ; but I should be gratified by the approval 
of the people of what I have done." This he re- 
ceived ; and, however precious it may have been to 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 133 

him, it is a more precious memory to the people 
themselves. 

His public life was embraced in the period of 
about six years. This statement does not include 
his brief service in the Legislature of the State of 
Illinois, nor his service as a subordinate officer in 
one of the frontier Indian wars, nor his single term 
of service in the House of Representatives of the 
United States nearly twenty years ago. In none 
of those places did he attract the attention of the 
country, nor did the experience acquired fit him 
specially for the great duties to which he was 
called finally. He was nearly fifty years of age 
when he entered upon the contest, henceforth his- 
torical, for a seat in the Senate from the State of 
Illinois. This was the commencement of his pub- 
lic life, and from that time forward he gained and 
grew in the estimation of his countrymen. At the 
moment of his death, he enjoyed the confidence of 
all loyal men, including those even who did not 
openly give him their support ; and there were 
many who came at last to regard him as a divinely 
appointed leader of the people. The speeches 
which he delivered in that contest are faithful ex- 
ponents of his character, his principles, and his ca- 
pacity. His statements of opinion were clear and 
unequivocal ; his reasoning was logical and har- 
monious ; and his principles, as then expressed, 



134 



PRESIDENT LINCOLN 



were consonant with the declaration, subsequently 
made, that '' each man has the right by nature to 
be the equal politically of any other man." He 
was then, as ever, chary of predictions concerning 
the future ; but it was in his opening speech that 
he declared his conviction, which was in truth a 
prophecy, that this nation could not remain perma- 
nently half slave and half free. 

In that long and arduous contest with one of 
the foremost men of the country, Mr. Lincoln 
made no remark which he w^as unable to defend, 
nor could he, by any force of argument, be driven 
from a position that he had taken. It was then 
that those who heard or read the debate observed 
the richness of his nature in mirth and wit Avhich 
charmed his friends without wounding his oppo- 
nents, and which he used with wonderful sagacity 
in illustrating his own arguments, or in weakening, 
or even at times in overthrowing, the arguments of 
his antagonist. And yet it can not be doubted 
that for many years, if not from his very 3^outh, 
Mr. Lincoln w^as a melancholy man. He seemed 
to bear about with him the weight of coming cares, 
and to sit in gloom, as though his path of life was 
darkened by an unwelcome shadow. His fondness 
for story and love for mirth were the compensation 
which Nature gave. 

In the midst of overburdening cares, these char- 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 135 

acteristics were a daily relief ; and yet it is but 
just to say that he often used an appropriate story 
as a means of foiling a too inquisitive visitor, or of 
changing" or ending a conversation which he did 
not desire to pursue. 

During the first French Revolution, when the 
streets of Paris were stained with human blood, 
the inhabitants, w^omen and men, flocked to places 
of amusement. To the mass of mankind, and es- 
pecially to the inexperienced, this conduct appears 
frivolous, or as the exhibition of a criminal indiffer- 
ence to the miseries of individuals and the calami- 
ties of the public. But such are the horrors of 
war, the pressure of responsibilit}^ that men often 
seek refuge and relief in amusements from which 
in ordinary times they w^ould turn aside. 

In Mr. Lincoln's speeches of 1858 there are 
passages w^hich suggest to the mind the classic 
models of ancient da3's, although they may not in 
any proper sense rise to an equality with them. 
His style of writing was as simple as were his own 
habits and manners ; and no person ever excelled 
him in clearness of expression. Hence he was un- 
derstood and appreciated by all classes. The 
Proclamation of Emancipation, his address at the 
dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg, and his 
touching letter to the widowed mother who had 
given five sons to the country, are memorable 



136 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

as evidences of his intellectual and moral great- 
ness. 

His speeches of 1858 are marked for the precis- 
ion with which he stated his own positions, and for 
the firmness exhibited whenever his opponent en- 
deavored to worry him from his chosen ground, 
or, by artifice, or argument, or persuasion, to in- 
duce him to advance a step beyond. 

His administration, as far as he himself was con- 
cerned, was inaugurated upon the doctrines and 
principles of the great debate. He recognized the 
obligation to return fugitives from slavery, and it 
was no part of his purpose to interfere with slavery 
in the States where it existed. It must remain for 
the historian and biographer, who may have access 
to private and personal sources of knowledge, to 
inform the country and the world how far Mr. Lin- 
coln, when he entered upon his duties as President, 
comprehended the magnitude of the struggle in 
which the nation was about to engage. 

The circumstance that his first call for volun- 
teers was for seventy-five thousand men only, is 
not valuable as evidence one way or the other. 
The number was quite equal to our supply of arms 
and material of w^ar, and altogether too large for 
the experience of the men then at the head of 
military affairs. The number was sufficient to 
show his purpose, the purpose to which he adhered 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 



137 



through all the trials and vicissitudes of this event- 
ful contest. His purpose was the suppression of 
the rebellion, both as a civil organization and as an 
armed military force, and the re-establishment of 
the authority of the United States over the terri- 
tory of the Union. There yet remain, in the minds 
of men who were acquainted with Mr. Lincoln in 
the spring and summer of 1861, the recollection of 
expressions made by him which indicate that there 
were then vague thoughts in his mind that it 
might be his lot under Providence to bring the 
slaves of the country out of their bondage. But, 
however this may have been, he never deviated 
from his purpose to suppress the rebellion ; and he 
conscientiously applied the means at his command 
to the attainment of that end. Thus, step by step, 
he advanced, until in his own judgment, in the 
judgment of the country, and of the best portion of 
mankind in other civilized nations, the emancipa- 
tion of the slaves was a necessary means for the 
successful prosecution of the war. Mr. Lincoln 
was not insensible to the justice of emancipation; 
he saw its wisdom as a measure of public policy ; 
but he delayed the proclamation until he was fully 
convinced that it offered the only chance of avert- 
ing a foreign war, suppressing the rebellion, and 
restoring the Union of the States. 

In the great struggle of 1862, Mr. Lincoln ex- 



138 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

hibited a twofold character. He was personally 
the enemy of slavery, and he ardently desired its 
abolition ; but he also regarded his oath of office, 
and steadily refused to recognize the existence of 
any right to proclaim emancipation while other 
means of saving the republic remained. He 
sought the path of duty, and he walked fearlessly 
in it. Until he was satisfied of the necessity of 
emancipation, no earthly power could have led 
him to issue the proclamation ; and, after its is- 
sue, no earthly power could have induced him 
to retract or to qualify it. When an effort was 
made to persuade him to qualify the proclama- 
tion, he said, in reference to the blacks, "■ My 
word is out to these people, and I can't take it 
back ! " 

It has been common, in representative govern- 
ments, for men to be advanced to great positions 
without any sufficient evidence existing of their 
ability to perform the corresponding duties, and it 
has often happened that the occupant has not been 
elevated, while the office has been sadly de- 
graded. It was observed by those who visited 
Mr. Lincoln on the day following his nomination 
at Chicago, in June, i860, that he would prove, in 
the event of his election, either a great success or 
a great failure. 

This prediction was based upon the single fact 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 139 

that he was different from ordinary men, and it did 
not contain, as an element of the opinion, any 
knowledge of his peculiar characteristics. History 
will accept the first branch of the alternative opin- 
ion, and pronounce his administration a great suc- 
cess. To this success Mr. Lincoln most largely 
contributed, and this in spite of pecuHarities which 
appeared to amount to defects in a great ruler in 
troublous times. 

Never were words uttered which contained 
less truth than those which fell from the hps of the 
assassin — " Sic semper tyrannis ! " — as he passed, in 
the presence of a,n excited and bewildered crowd, 
from the spot where he had committed the foulest 
of murders, to the stage of the theatre whence he 
made his escape. 

Mr. Lincoln exercised power with positive re- 
luctance and unfeigned distaste. He shrank from 
the exhibition of any authority that was oppressive, 
harsh, or even disagreeable, to a human being. He 
passed an entire night in anxious thought and 
prayerful deliberation before he could sanction the 
execution of Gordon, the slave-dealer, although he 
had been tried, found guilty, and sentenced to 
death. There is but little doubt, such was the 
kindness of Mr. Lincoln's nature, that he desired 
to close the war, and restore the Union, without 
exacting the forfeit of a single life as a punishment 

10 



140 



PRESIDENT LINCOLN 



for the great crime of which the leaders in this 
rebellion are guilty. 

Could this liberal policy have been carried out, 
it would have been the theme of perpetual eulogy, 
and its author would have received the acclama- 
tion of all races and classes of men. . 

Mr. Lincoln had not in his nature, or in the 
habits of his life, any element or feature of tyranny. 
He had no love of power for the sake of power. 
He preferred that every man should act as might 
seem to him best ; and when, in the discharge of 
his duties, he was called to enforce penalties, or 
even to remove men from place, he suffered more 
usually than did the subjects of his authority. It 
is easy to understand that this peculiarity was 
sometimes an obstacle to the vigorous administra- 
tion of affairs. But, on the other hand, it must 
have happened occasionally that these delays led 
to a better judgment in the end. 

Mr. Lincoln was, in the best sense of the ex- 
pression, an industrious man. Whatever he ex- 
amined, he examined carefully and thoroughly. 
His patience was unlimited. He listened atten- 
tively to advice, though it is probable that he sel- 
dom asked it. For nearly fifty years before he en- 
tered upon the duties of President, he had relied 
upon himself ; and it is said that, in the practice of 
his profession, he never sought opinions or sugges- 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 141 

tions from his brethren, except as they were associ- 
ated with him in particular causes. He had the 
acuteness of the lawyer and the fairness of the 
judge. The case must be intricate indeed which 
he did not easily analyze, so as to distinguish and 
estimate whatever was meritorious or otherwise in 
it. He saw also through the motives of men. He 
easily fathomed those around him, and acted in the 
end as though he understood their dispositions 
toward himself. 

He appeared to possess an intuitive knowledge 
of the opinions and purposes of the people. His 
sense of justice was exact ; and, if he ever failed to 
be guided by it, the departure was due to the kind- 
ness of his nature, which always prompted him to 
look with the compassion of a parent upon the 
unfortunate — the guilty as well as the innocent. 
He was cautious in forming opinions, and dis- 
inclined to disclose his purposes until the mo- 
ment of action arrived. He examined every sub- 
ject of importance with conscientious care ; his 
conclusions were formed under a solemn sense of 
duty ; and while that sense of duty remained, he 
was firm in resisting all counter-influences. In 
unimportant matters, not involving principles or 
the character of his public policy, he yielded 
readily to the wishes of those around him ; and 
thus they who knew him or heard of him in these 



142 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

relations only, were misled as to his true char- 
acter. 

No magistrate or ruler ever labored more zeal- 
ously to place his measures and policy upon the 
sure foundation of right ; and no magistrate or 
ruler ever adhered to his measures and policy with 
more firmness as long as he felt sure of the founda- 
tion. His last public address is a memorable illus- 
tration of these traits of character. 

The charmed cord by w^hich he attached all to 
him who enjoyed his acquaintance, even in the 
slightest degree, was the absence of all pretension 
in manners, conversation, or personal appearance. 
This was not humihty, either real or assumed ; but 
it was due to an innate and ever-present conscious- 
ness of the equality of men. He accorded to every 
one w^ho approached him, whatever his business 
or station in life, such hearing and attention as 
circumstances permitted. For himself he asked 
nothing of the nature of personal consideration. 
In the multiplicity of his cares, in his daily atten- 
tion to cases touching the reputation and rights 
of humble and unknown men, in the patience 
with which he listened to the narratives of heart- 
broken women, wdiose husbands, or sons, or broth- 
ers, had fallen under arrest, or into disgrace in the 
military or naval service of the country, he w^as in- 
deed the servant and the friend of all. 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 143 

The inexorable rules of military discipline were 
sometimes disregarded by him ; he sought to make 
an open way for justice through the forms and 
technicalities of courts-martial, bureaus, and depart- 
ments ; and it is not unlikely that the public serv- 
ice may have received detriment occasionally by 
the too free use of the power to pardon and to re- 
store. But the nation could well afford the indul- 
gence of his overkind nature in these particulars ; 
for by this kindness of nature he drew the people 
to him, and thus opinions were harmonized, the re- 
public was strengthened, and the power of its ene- 
mies sensibly diminished. 

Mr. Lincoln never despaired of the republic. 
During the dark days of July, August, and Sep- 
tember, 1862, he was not dismayed by the disasters 
which befell our arms. His confidence was not in 
our military strength alone ; he looked to the Lord 
of hosts for the final delivery of the people. 

Following this attempt to analyze Mr. Lincoln's 
intellectual and moral character, it remains to be 
said that neither this analysis, nor the statements 
with which it is connected, furnish any just idea of 
the man. He was more, he was greater, he was 
wiser, he was better, than the ideal man which we 
should be authorized to create from the qualities 
disclosed by the analysis. And so, possibly, there 
will ever remain an apparent dissimilitude between 



144 



PRESIDENT LINCOLN 



the appreciable individual qualities of the man and 
the man himself. 

Mr. Lincoln was a wise man ; but he had not 
the wisdom of the ancient philosophers, who de- 
clared it to be the knowledge of things both divine 
and human, together with the causes on which 
they depend ; but he was rather an illustration of 
the proverb of Solomon, " The fear of the Lord is 
the instruction of wisdom." 

Mr. Lincoln must ever be named among the 
great personages of history. He will be con- 
trasted rather than compared with those with 
whom he is thus to be associated ; and, when com.- 
pared with any, he is most likely to be compared 
with the Father of his Country. If this be so, then 
his rank is already fixed and secure. In many par- 
ticulars he differs from other great men. When 
his important public services began, he was more 
than fifty years of age ; while Cromwell was only 
forty years old when called from retirement, and 
most eminent men in civil and military life have 
been distinguished at an earlier age. He had 
neither military fame nor military experience. He 
was taken from private life, and advanced to the 
Presidency, upon a pure question or declaration of 
public policy — the non-extension of slavery. He en- 
tered upon his great office in the presence of assas- 
sins and traitors ; and, from that day to the day of 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 145 

his death, he dwelt in their presence and faithfully 
performed his duties. He conducted the affairs of 
the republic in the most perilous of times. In the 
short period of four years he called three million 
men into the military service of his country. Dur- 
ing his administration a rebellion, in which eleven 
States and six million people were involved, was 
effectually overthrown. But the great act which 
secures to his name all the immortality which earth 
can bestow, is the Proclamation of Emancipation. 
The knowledge of that deed can never die. On 
this continent it will be associated with the Decla- 
ration of Independence, and with that alone. One 
made a nation independent ; the other made a race 
free. 

There are four million people in this country 
who now regard Abraham Lincoln as their deliv- 
erer from bondage, and whose posterity, through 
all the coming centuries, will render tribute of 
praise to his name and memory. But his fame in 
connection with the Proclamation of Emancipation 
will not be left to the care of those who have been 
the recipients of the boon of freedom. The white 
people of the South will yet rejoice in the knowl- 
edge of their own deliverance through this gift to 
the now-despised colored man. And, finally, the 
people of the United States, of the American Conti- 
nent, together with the whole family of civilized 



146 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

man, will join in honors to the memory of him who 
freed a race and saved a nation. 

What fame that is human merely can be more 
secure? What glory that is of earth can be more 
enduring? What deed for good can be more wide- 
spread ? 

The influence of the great act of his life will 
extend to every continent and to all races. It will 
advance with civilization into Africa ; it will shake 
and finally overthrow slavery in the dominions of 
Spain and in the Empire of Brazil ; and at last, in 
that it saved a republic, and perpetuated a free 
representative government as an example and 
model for mankind, it will undermine the monarchi- 
cal, aristocratic, and despotic institutions of Europe 
and Asia. What fame that is human merely can 
be more secure ? What glory that is of earth can 
be more enduring? What deed for good can be 
more wide-spread ? 

Yet this great act rested on a foundation on 
which all may stand. In the place where he was, 
he did that which, in his judgment, duty to his 
country and to his God required. This is, indeed, 
his highest praise, and the only eulogy that his life 
demands. 

That he had greater opportunities than other 
men, was his responsibility and burden ; that he 
used his great opportunities for the preservation 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 



H7 



of his country and the reUef of the oppressed, is his 
own glor}'. 

Had Mr. Lincoln been permitted to reach the 
age attained by Jefferson or Adams, his death 
would have produced a profound impression upon 
his countrymen. 

Had he now, in the opening months of his sec- 
ond administration, fallen by accident or yielded to 
disease, the nation would have been bowed down 
in inexpressible grief. Every loyal heart would 
have been burdened with a weight of sorrow, and 
every loyal household would have felt as though a 
place had been made vacant at its own hearth- 
stone. 

That he has now fallen by the hand of an assas- 
sin is in itself a horror too appalling for contempla- 
tion. Had the deed been committed in ancient 
Greece or Rome, w^e could not now read the his- 
torian's record without a shudder and a tear. All 
those qualities in the illustrious victim which we 
cherish were spurs, ever goading the conspirators 
on to the consummation of their crime. 

His love of country and of liberty, his devotion 
to duty, his firmness and persistency in the right, 
his kindness of heart, and his spirit of mercy, were 
all reasons or inducements influencing the purposes 
of the conspirators. Neither greatness nor good- 
ness was a shield. Had he been greater and bet- 



148 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 

ter and wiser than he was, his fate would have 
been the same. 

In this hour of calamity, let not the thirst for 
vengeance take possession of our souls. But jus- 
tice should be done. The circle of conspirators is 
already broken and entered by the officers of the 
law, and mankind will finally be permitted to see 
who were the authors and who the perpetrators of 
this great crime. For the members of this circle, 
whether it be small or large, and whomsoever it 
may include, there should be neither compassion 
nor mercy, but justice and only justice. Judged as 
men judge, this crime is too great for pardon. 
The criminals can find no protection or harbor in 
any civilized country. Let the Government pursue 
them with its full power until the last one disap- 
pears from earth. Vex every sea, visit every isl- 
and, traverse every continent ; let there be no abid- 
ing-place for these criminals between the Arctic 
seas and the Antarctic pole ! 

This, Justice demands, as she sits in judgment 
upon this unparalleled crime. 

One duty and one consolation remain. He who 
destroyed slavery was himself by slavery de- 
stroyed. Whoever the assassin, and however nu- 
merous the conspirators, love of slavery was the 
evil spirit which had entered into these men and 
taken possession of them. Slavery is the source 



THE STATESMAN AND LIBERATOR. 



149 



and fountain of the crime, and all they who have 
given their support to slavery are in some degree 
responsible for the awful deed. Let, then, the 
nation purify itself from this the foulest of sins. 
And this is our duty. 

In the providence of God, Mr. Lincoln was per- 
mitted to do more than any other man of this cent- 
ury for his country, for liberty, and for mankind. 
Mr. Lincoln is dead ; but the nation lives, and the 
providence of God ever continues. No single life 
w^as ever yet essential to the life of a nation. This 
is our consolation and ground for confidence in the 
future. 



GENERAL GRANT. 

The representative, republican system of gov- 
ernment in the United States is no longer an ex- 
periment. In the period of the existence of this 
government, now nearly a hundred years, its Con- 
stitution has been perfected, its methods of admin- 
istration improved, its faculties enlarged, its pow- 
ers tested, and the limits of its authority and ju- 
risdiction ascertained and established either by a 
recognized public opinion, or by the force of ac- 
cepted judicial decisions. 

While there are with us differences of opinion 
upon measures of administration, there are no sub- 
stantial differences of opinion as to the funda- 
mental principles of the government under which 
we are living. In this respect we are distinguished 
favorably from every other great government, un- 
less a parallel can be found in the Oriental world. 
In England, Russia, Germany, and France, there 
are bodies of men who would welcome the over- 
throw of the existing forms of governn^ent, and 
the advent of a new order of things. 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN. 151 

No system that is of human origin can be estab- 
lished more firmly than is the republican system of 
government in the United States. This result is 
due in part to the wisdom of men, but it is due in 
a larger degree, probably, to what we are accus- 
tomed to call the force of events. But as the 
events of which we speak are dependent, either 
presently or remotely, upon the acts of men, it fol- 
lows that the policy and doings of rulers of states, 
and the achievements of leaders of armies, whose 
acts may have tended to create, to preserve, or to 
destroy states, must always engage the attention 
of mankind. 

It is therefore my purpose to consider some of 
the events in the career of General Grant which 
have contributed to the final and favorable solu- 
tion of the problems that vexed the founders of this 
Government. 

In the first century of our national life three 
persons have been elected to the presidency who 
are, and Vt^ho will continue to be, the three great 
figures in American history : The Founder of the 
Republic ; the Liberator of the Republic ; the 
Savior of the Republic — 

Washington, Lincoln, and Grant. 
They were not rivals in deeds ; and if some re- 
semblances in character may be found, it is yet 



152 GENERAL GRANT 

true that they touched one another at a few points 
only. 

As a soldier, Washington was equal to the de- 
mand made upon him ; and as a recognized leader 
in the organization of a government upon ideas 
and principles for which there was no precedent, 
his pre-eminence is established. 

Lincoln's fame rests upon his pure patriotism, 
his unyielding courage, and his great act of eman- 
cipation which made the restoration of the Union 
possible upon the basis of the equality of men in 
the States, and the equality of States in the Union. 

The world-wide fame of General Grant rests 
upon his military achievements. As a soldier he 
has no equal in our history ; and as a commander 
of armies he must be numbered in the first ten of 
whom the annals of mankind have taken notice. 

I speak of General Grant as his friend, and in 
the hope that ultimately the world may see him 
on the page of history as he appeared to those 
who w^ere near him when he was among the living. 
But I am not to use the language of bereave- 
ment, nor indulge myself in the utterance of fu- 
nereal phrases. The days of mourning are over 
with the great public, and henceforth mankind will 
contemplate General Grant as an historical charac- 
ter only. 

'' The glory dies not, and the grief is past." 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN. 153 

The greatness of men is manifested in what 
they are, in what they do, and in their capacity for 
foreseeing what is to be. 

This test is applied to all the living, either by 
the family, or the neighborhood, or the State, or 
the nation ; and it is applied to all the dead whose 
names and deeds finds a place in history. From 
that test we are not to shrink in this discussion. 
Things not attempted, or attempted and not ac- 
complished, do not necessarily, nor even naturally, 
furnish either a test or a measure of a man's ca- 
pacities. We value a machine by the measure of 
its strength at its weakest point ; but we value a 
man by the measure of his strength at the place 
where he is strongest. Of absolute human great- 
ness we have had no example ; nor has it been the 
fortune of any man to be pre-eminent in a variety 
of ways. Usually the pre-eminence achieved has 
been limited to a single line of effort or sphere of 
duty. 

The greatness of men is not found in a repeti- 
tion of what has been done or said in other ages or 
by other men. The demand is for some new 
thought ; some advance in scientific knowledge ; 
some progress in art ; some new idea in govern- 
ment ; some feat, or stratagem, or campaign in 
war for which no precedent could be found in the 
ages ; or some word or deed or policy by which 



154 GENERAL GRANT 

nations are created, regenerated, or saved. And 
from this test we are not to shrink in considering 
the career of General Grant. 

Greatness is not so much an acquisition as an 
endowment. The schools can not go beyond the 
known. They teach what has been accomplished. 
The sphere of the truly great man is outside or 
beyond the known. In that sphere the rules of 
the schools must be disregarded, or their teach- 
ings must be extended. 

The influence of a great man will outlast the 
civilization in which he acts, of which he is a part, 
and to whose power he contributes. It may even 
outlive all knowledge of his name, it may course 
throusrh unseen channels when nationalities, once 
vigorous, when forms of government once stable 
and controlling, when religions once believed and 
adored, have passed away and disappeared abso- 
lutely from the knowledge of men. All this can 
not be said or predicated of any living man, nor can 
any person assume as much of any contemporary, 
living or dead. This test is not in the present ; it 
can only be made in the far-distant future. Nor 
can this claim be urged for any mere soldier, what- 
ever his deeds, or however wide-spread may be his 
fame. The achievements of war must be inter- 
woven with the fortunes of mankind in times of 
peace, and they must so work in institutions and 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN. 155 

through the ages as to increase the happiness, ele- 
vate the character, and advance the destiny of men 
in nations, or promote the progress of the race 
generall3^ 

In this particular the fortunes of General 
Washington and General Grant are identical in 
kind although they do not correspond in degree. 
Washington's career in war was followed by the 
successful reorganization of the States of the Con- 
federacy of 1778, into a more perfect Union, but 
still a Union in which there were serious defects. 

The basis of our system of government is 
found in the institutions of England and in the in- 
stitutions of the colonies. The independent judi- 
ciary ; the single executive, responsible to the peo- 
ple through the legislative branch of the Govern- 
ment ; the Legislature composed of two Houses, of 
equal powers in matters of legislation; and the 
equality of States as constituents of the nation, 
were all recognized as institutional features whose 
incorporation into the new Constitution was a ne- 
cessity arising from our history, traditions, and ex- 
perience. 

The debates of the Convention of 1787, the ar- 
guments of " The Federalist," and the commentaries 
of Story upon the Constitution, all show that the 
field for invention was limited. Our fathers bor- 
rowed freely from Great Britain : they accepted 



156 GENERAL GRANT 

the lessons derived from the experience of the 
colonies, and especially the lesson taught by the 
failure of the Confederation. And, finally, they 
made concessions, not always without misgivings, 
and especially were there misgivings in reference 
to the concessions relating to the institution of 
slavery. 

In 1787 there was a general impression that a 
new form of government was indispensable, but 
there was a wide difference of opinion as to what 
that government should be. There Avas a senti- 
ment of nationality, but that sentiment was subor- 
dinated generally to the hereditary attachment of the 
masses to the respective colonies and States. Some 
of the leaders feared that the sovereignty and pow- 
ers of the States would be absorbed by the General 
Government, while others apprehended that the 
Union under the new Constitution would crumble 
and fall from its own inherent weakness. To 
Washington is the country most largely indebted 
for the spirit of conciliation and for the mutual 
confidence which led the people to ratify the work 
of the Convention. 

When Washington came to the presidency, the 
questions of pressing and paramount importance 
were these : The maintenance of the public credit ; 
the payment of the public debt ; the preservation of 
peace, while we asserted and vindicated all our just 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN. 



157 



rights as one of the family of nations ; and, finally, 
the organization of States, discordant in opinion 
and sensitive to every movement affecting their in- 
dependence and sovereignty, into a compact politi- 
cal Union, capable of furnishing adequate protec- 
tion, to citizens and States, against domestic vio- 
lence and foreign foes. 

All this was the work of administration when 
the Constitution had been prepared by the Con- 
vention, when it had been ratified by the people, 
and when the skeleton framework of the Govern- 
ment had been brought together ; and all this was 
accomplished during the presidency of General 
Washington. 

The claim of Washington to the appellation of 
'' Founder of the Republic " rests not alone nor 
chiefly upon his services as commander of the 
armies, nor upon his services as President of the 
Constitutional Convention, but rather upon his fore- 
seeing, conservative, organizing qualities and facul- 
ties manifested most clearly when he became Presi- 
dent of the United States. 

When General Grant became President, seven 
only of the eleven States then recently in rebellion 
had been admitted to representation in Congress. 
Georgia, Texas, Mississippi, and Virginia, were 
still held in a territorial condition and subject to 
military rule. The preceding three years had been 



158 GENERAL GRANT 

marked by a bitter contest between the executive 
and legislative branches of the Government. In 
ordinary times such a contest would affect perni- 
ciously the welfare of a people. From 1866 to 
1869 it was impossible for either party to the con- 
test to originate and execute successfully any 
system of reconstruction. The larger body of the 
white inhabitants of the South took sides with 
the President; the majority of the voters of the 
old free States sustained the policy of Congress. 
Under these diverse influences the restoration of 
the States of the South was postponed, divisions 
of opinion were promoted, which soon ripened into 
bitter hostilities, all business interests languished, 
and the day of substantial prosperity for the war- 
stricken region of our country seemed farther away 
than when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. 

These evil influences were not limited by the 
boundaries of the States that had been in rebellion. 
The public revenues were either not collected, or 
they \vere squandered or plundered on the way to 
the Treasury. The payments on the public debt 
for the year 1868 did not exceed twenty-five mill- 
ion dollars, while the total liabilities of the nation, 
liquidated and unliquidated, were not less than 
three thousand million. The annual interest ac- 
count exceeded one hundred and thirty million 
dollars. 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN, 159 

The public credit was so impaired that coin 
bonds, bearing interest at the rate of six per cent, 
were sold at eighty-three cents on the dollar ; the 
doctrine of repudiation was taught openly ; and in- 
telligent communities accepted the notion that the 
issue of irredeemable paper money was a safe and 
wise public policy. The country was divided, not 
very unequally, upon the question of extending the 
right of suffrage to the negro population of the 
South. The 27th day of February, 1869, five days 
before the inauguration of General Grant, Congress 
submitted to the States the question of the ratifica- 
tion of the proposition that is now the fifteenth 
amendment to the Constitution of the United 
States. Its fate was uncertain. By the fourteenth 
amendment a State was tolerated in denying to 
portions of its adult male citizens the right of suf- 
frage if it would therefor consent to a proportion- 
ate loss of its representation in Congress and in the 
electoral college. It was an expedient adopted 
during the transition period between slavery and 
freedom. It was an expedient, moreover, that 
would have been fruitful in controversies if it had 
not been abrogated by the ratification of the fif- 
teenth amendment. 

In addition to these domestic difficulties our re- 
lations with France were disturbed by the recollec- 
tion that Napoleon had attempted to place Maxi- 



l6o GENERAL GRANT 

milian upon a throne in Mexico in defiance of the 
Monroe doctrine, and at a moment when we were 
incapable of decisive action ; the abolition of slav- 
ery in the United States and the revolutionary con- 
dition of affairs in Cuba had impaired our friendly 
relations with Spain ; while with Great Britain 
there were causes of alienation and bitterness 
which, at any moment, might have led to the sus- 
pension of diplomatic intercourse. 

This is but an imperfect summary of the diffi- 
culties, foreign and domestic, which confronted 
General Grant on the day of his inauguration. 
Assuredly they were less formidable than those 
which Mr. Lincoln had been called to meet in 1861, 
but, with that exception, they were the most seri- 
ous difficulties that had waited upon an}^ Adminis- 
tration since 1789. 

Foreseeing is the primary element of statesman- 
ship. This power General Grant possessed. In 
his inaugural address he said : " The country hav- 
ing just emerged from a great rebellion, many ques- 
tions will come before it for settlement in the next 
four years which preceding Administrations have 
never had to deal with." He specified the ques- 
tions, and he implored the country to deal with 
them " without prejudice, hate, or sectional pride." 
Again he said : 

*' A great debt has been contracted in securing 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN i6l 

to us and our posterity the Union. . . . To pro- 
tect the national honor every dollar of government 
indebtedness should be paid in gold, unless other- 
wise expressly stipulated in the contract. . . . Let 
it be understood that no repudiator of one farthing 
of our public debt will be trusted in public place, 
and it will go far toward strengthening a credit 
which ought to be the best in the world, and will 
ultimately enable us to replace the debt with bonds 
bearing less interest than we now pay." Thus 
clearly did he forecast the financial policy of his 
Administration, and to that policy his Administra- 
tion adhered. At its close, one fifth part of the 
public debt had been paid, the interest had been 
reduced in a greater ratio, the public credit was so 
established that bonds bearing interest at four per 
cent were at par, and the clamor for repudiation 
was hushed absolutely. 

" In regard to foreign policy," he said, '* I would 
deal with nations as equitable law requires individ- 
uals to deal with each other." And he then served 
notice on ambassadors, kings, and emperors in these 
words : ^^ If others depart from this rule in their deal- 
ings with us, we may be compelled to follozv their prec- 
edent!' There was no departure from the rule, 
and at the close of his Administration every inter- 
national question had been adjusted amicably. 

Thus and then, and for the first time in the his- 



1 62 GENERAL GRANT 

tory of the republic, every foreign question affect- 
ing the interests or rights of the nation was trans- 
ferred from the field of diplomacy and debate to 
the realm of fixed law. Questions between nations 
imply controversy, and controversies may and often 
they do develop into alienation and war. 

As neither General Grant nor the American 
people put any responsibility upon the French na- 
tion for the invasion of Mexico, the downfall of 
Napoleon quieted all feeling on that subject. 

A rigid observance of our neutrality, during the 
rebellion in Cuba, preserved and strengthened our 
friendly relations with Spain, and enabled the Ad- 
ministration to protest, and with effect, against the 
system of slavery in the Spanish colonies. 

With England we had one open question, as old 
as our Government, which had given rise to acri- 
monious correspondence in many Administrations. 
The Island of San Juan, on the Pacific, had been 
subject to joint armed occupancy for nearly a quar- 
ter of a century. By the treaty with Great Britain 
of the 8th of May, 1871, that question was referred 
to the arbitration of the Emperor of Germany, 
who sustained the claim of the United States. 

By the same treaty the claims against Great 
Britain growing out of the destruction of our 
commerce during the civil war, by vessels al- 
leged to have been fitted out or to have obtained 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN. 163 

supplies in British ports, were referred to arbi- 
tration. 

The value of the arbitration was not so much 
in the adequate award that was made by the arbi- 
trators, as in the example and precedent furnished 
and already followed by other nations as a means 
of avoiding war ; and especially in the case of the 
reference by Germany and Spain of the question of 
the jurisdiction of the Carohne Islands to the head 
of the Cathohc Church. But I should be unjust to 
the living, and I should misinterpret the sentiments 
and opinions which General Grant entertained and 
often expressed, if I did not say that the Administra- 
tion and the country were largely, most largely, 
indebted to Hamilton Fish for the successful com- 
pletion of these great undertakings in diplomacy. 
But I should be equally unjust to General Grant if 
I were to omit the statement that the policy of these 
negotiations was in harmony wdth his opinions, or 
that from time to time he contributed by sugges- 
tion and counsel to the result reached finally. Un- 
der our system the President is the responsible 
head of the Government ; and while he can not, m 
the nature of his duties, supervise the details of the 
business of the departments, he does give direc- 
tion to the policy of the Government, and most es- 
pecially in its foreign affairs. 

As in those affairs nothing can be accomplished 



164 GENERAL GRANT 

without his authority and consent, so at the end he 
should receive the praise, as he must, in case of 
failure, bear the blame. 

The treaty of 1871 provided for the settlement 
of all the pending questions between Great Britain 
and the United States ; and it was a circumstance 
of unusual distinction that the terms of settlement 
were at the moment acceptable to the authorities 
and people of both countries. 

The treaty of peace of 1783 left open lor debate 
and controversy three questions of signal impor- 
tance — the northeastern boundary, the fisheries, 
and the navigation of the Mississippi River. 

The treaty of 1794 gave rise to bitter party con- 
tests m the United States ; it interrupted our 
friendly relations with France; and, finally, it 
brought us to the verge of war with our ancient 
ally. 

The purchase of Louisiana in 1803 was de- 
nounced as an unconstitutional proceeding, and 
eminent statesmen were filled with alarm at the ex- 
tension of a territory which, as they thought, was 
already too vast for one government. 

The treaty of peace concluded at Ghent, in the 
month of December, 18 14, left open the question 
on which the War of 18 12 had been declared. 

The Ashburton - Webster treaty of 1842, by 
which the controversy in regard to our north- 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN, 165 

eastern boundary was ended, and the danger of 
war with Great Britain averted, gave rise to disa- 
greeable criticisms in Congress, and to violent op- 
position in the State of Maine, whose claims to ju- 
risdiction were limited at points on its frontier. 

The treaty of 1846, by which an effort was 
made to fix our northern line from the lakes to 
the Pacific Ocean, left to the two countries the in- 
heritance of the San Juan controversy. 

The treaty of 1871 with Great Britain takes 
rank as the third in importance of all the treaties to 
which the United States has been a party. First 
of all, the treaty of 1778 with France, of friendship 
and alliance ; then the treaty of peace with Great 
Britain of 1783, by which our independence was 
acknowledged and the foundations of our future 
greatness were laid. 

Nor in this statement do I forget the signal ad- 
vantages which have resulted from the treaty of 
1803, by which the vast though not well-defined 
Territory of Louisiana was added to the domain 
of the republic. 

Its acquisition was followed by some evils. 
Those evils were temporary ; the advantages were 
permanent. But the treaty did not originate any 
rule, nor settle any question of international law ; 
it did not quiet any controversy ; it did not avert 
any present pressing danger. Nevertheless, within 



1 66 GENERAL GRANT 

the limits fixed by circumstances, the Louisiana 
treaty must ever be regarded as one of the wisest 
measures of American diplomacy. 

To the world at large, however, the treaty of 
1 87 1 may prove to be the most important of any. 

Our grievance against Great Britain was as 
serious as any grievance possible that did not arise 
from the actual invasion of territory. 

The allegation then was — and the judgment at 
Geneva sustained the allegation — that Great Brit- 
ain had covertly given aid and comfort to the re- 
bellion, and that by that aid our commerce had 
been driven from the ocean, our prestige impaired 
seriously, and the commercial supremacy of Eng- 
land re-established for an indefinite period of 
time. Ancient hostilities were renewed, tradi- 
tional prejudices were revived, and the war spirit 
of the nation might have been aroused easily and 
speedily. 

By some the suggestion was made that England 
should be required to withdraw her flag from this 
continent. From others came the suggestion that 
we should lie in wait, and at a favorable moment 
retaliate upon British commerce. 

To neither of these suggestions did General 
Grant give ear or voice. Trained to the art of 
war, acquainted with its perils and its horrors, the 
recipient of all the renown that nations can bestow 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN, 167 

upon a successful military chieftain, he was more 
than all a man of peace. 

From the commencement of his Administration 
he felt assured of an ultimate settlement upon a 
basis honorable to the United States and not dis- 
creditable to Great Britain. 

And may I not turn aside for a moment to in- 
dulge in the reflection that, under Providence, this 
great example may tend to the peace of nations ? 
All Europe is oppressed by taxes and debts, and 
for every acre of her arable ground there is an 
armed man. This policy, if continued, can end 
only in general repudiation and universal disaster. 

It may not be possible to avoid war. The in- 
trigues of rulers, the ambitions of successful poli- 
ticians and soldiers, the passions of the multitude, 
may involve nations in war ; but the treaty of 1871 
furnishes some security for the peace of the world. 
Or, if so much can not be assumed, it furnishes 
ground for the hope that considerate rulers will 
imitate the example and accept for guidance the 
new rules of international law which are embodied 
in the Treaty of Washington. 

I pass now to the consideration of a topic on 
which differences of opinion exist. 

Five days before the inauguration of General 
Grant, Congress adopted a resolution by which the 
proposition now embodied in the fifteenth amend- 



1 68 GENERAL GRANT 

ment to the Constitution was submitted to the 
States. 

In his inaugural address General Grant said : 
*' The question of suffrage is one which is likely to 
agitate the public so long as a portion of the citi- 
zens of the nation are excluded from its privileges 
in any State. It seems to me very desirable that 
this question should be settled now, and 1 enter- 
tain the hope and the desire that it may be by the 
ratification of the fifteenth article of amendment 
to the Constitution." 

General Grant was then at the height of his 
power and influence in the country. The incom- 
ing of his Administration marked a new epoch in 
public affairs. His political supporters, however, 
were not agreed in advocacy of the measure, and 
his opponents generally were hostile to the ratifi- 
cation of the amendment. If the President had 
been indifferent to its success, the proposition 
would have been lost. On that subject, however, 
his judgment w^as fixed and his purpose clear. 
Nor in that case was his judgment affected by the 
opinions or wishes of others. 

He did not originate the measure, but his re- 
sponsibility for the ratification of the proposed 
amendment is greater than that of any other per- 
son, living or dead. His reason for the recommen- 
dation is a living reason, and not unworthy present 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN. 169 

consideration by the whole country : " TJie question 
of suffrage is one which is likely to agitate the public 
so long as a portion of the citizens of the nation are 
excluded from its privileges in an} Stated 

This is at once a prediction and a warning. 
The voice of the oppressed will at some time be 
heard. The demand of justice will at some mo- 
ment be answered. Slavery employed its vast, 
concentrated power, re-enforced by the authority of 
the Government, for more than half a century, in 
an effort to stifle opinions, to suppress freedom of 
thought, of debate, and of political action, and the 
end was an inglorious failure and a retribution of 
blood. 

The fifteenth amendment embodies the funda- 
mental idea of republican, American liberty. It is 
the constitutional security for the political equal- 
ity of men in the States, and without such equality 
there can be no equality of States in the Union. 
The injustice of men may delay, but the final result 
is not doubtful, nor even distant. 

In these latter days the South has justly and 
freely accorded to General Grant high praise for 
the conditions and terms of the surrender at Ap- 
pomattox. The circumstances of that occasion 
gave great dignity to the act, but the act itself was 
but the natural expression of the innate character 
of General Grant. In the nature of things the 



I70 GENERAL GRANT 

leaders of Southern opinion could not have under- 
stood the hero of Appomattox in the year 1869; 
but if it had then been given to them to see him as 
he was, and if they had accepted the constitutional 
amendments as binding and everywhere operative, 
all of constitutional power that he could have com- 
manded would have been used in aid of their re- 
habilitation as States, and for the speedy develop- 
ment of their resources. 

General Grant was free from malice, and he 
was kind and compassionate by nature. It is diffi- 
cult to comprehend the qualities of a man who 
could be moved by a narrative of individual suffer- 
ing, and who yet could sleep while surrounded by 
the horrors of the battles of the Wilderness. 

The solution of the difficulty must be found in 
the fact that he possessed a philosophical temper- 
ament which enabled him to look upon the con- 
sequences of war as of the inevitable, and to feel 
that his duties, as the organizer and director of 
armies, required him to suppress not only all mani- 
festations of sympathy, but also to suppress the feel- 
ing itself. And this of a man whose devotion to 
his family, to his friends, to his country, was abso- 
lute. 

It is an error to assume that General Grant en- 
joyed the exercise of power, but it is true that he 
enjoyed the possession of power as the evidence of 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN. 



i;i 



the public confidence. And it is an error of the 
gravest sort to assume that he had an ambition for 
the possession of arbitrary power. When the Ku- 
klux bands were engaged in their work of outrage 
and murder in the South, he sent a message to me 
requesting me to call at the Executive Mansion. 
When I met him, he said he had sent for me to ac- 
company him to the Capitol. On the way he in- 
formed me that he had promised Senators that he 
would send a message to Congress asking for addi- 
tional legislation for the suppression of the Ku-klux 
organizations. " But the public mind," said he, " is 
already disturbed by the charge that I am exercis- 
ing despotic powers in the South ; and therefore 
I am unwilling to ask for additional legislation." 
Upon arriving at the Capitol, he sent for Senators 
and members, to whom he made known his change 
of opinion. With great vmanimity they combated 
his views, relying mainly upon the proposition that 
it would be easier to defend the needed legislation 
than to defend the President in the steps that he 
might be compelled to take in the absence of spe- 
cific authority. 

While the discussion went on. General Grant 
turned to the table and wrote a message to Con- 
gress in favor of the proposed legislation. In the 
mean time, the Secretary of State and two other 
members of the Cabinet had arrived. Upon con- 

12 



1^2 GENERAL GRANT 

sultation, one word only in the message was 
changfed. This circumstance shows his disinclina- 
tion to seek power, and it illustrates his facility in 
the use of his faculties when surrounded by dis- 
tracting influences. 

In the administration of a government it hap- 
pens occasionally that a person in office, or a per- 
son named as a candidate for an office, suffers un- 
justly through erroneous or false representations 
concerning him. 

In General Grant's first term, a few persons 
were removed from office in the Treasury Depart- 
ment under such circumstances. When a case was 
within his knowledge, he never abandoned the per- 
son until some reparation had been made. Possi- 
bly the recollection of the wrong he had himself 
suffered might have quickened his sensibilities in 
that respect. 

And let no one count these incidents as trifles, 
for they reveal the manner of man that General 
Grant was. 

For the pomp and show of military life he had no 
taste whatever. He shunned military displays and 
reviews while in Europe. When in active service, 
his dress was plain, and he seldom wore a sword. 
He scarcely recognized the cheers of the soldiers, 
and he never sought them. His knowledge of 
military literature must have been limited. In 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN. 173 

many conversations that I had with him he never 
spoke of any miUtary operation that did not relate 
to our civil war, or to the war with Mexico. When 
the citizens of Boston were about to give a Ubrary 
to General Grant, Mr. Hooper sought to ascertain, 
quietly, what military books the General owned, 
that duplicates might be avoided. He found that 
his library was barren of military works. 

His respectable but not distinguished standing 
in his class at West Point was due to his mathemat- 
ical powers, and not to his habits of study, nor to 
his attainments in other departments. He read 
novels, indulged his taste for sketching and paint- 
ing, of Avhich two specimens have been preserved, 
and he scanned the newspapers in the hope that 
Congress had abolished the school, that he might 
abandon military life without dishonor. 

He obeyed the order to proceed to Mexico 
upon the idea that he was bound in honor to serve 
eight years in the army. Otherwise, he would 
have tendered his resignation at the close of his 
term at West Point. 

General Grant was not a soldier from taste ; his 
education at West Point was accepted, rather than 
sought ; and he Avas not stimulated by the history 
and literature of war. 

His appointment to the Military Academy was 
an incident which had no relation to his wishes nor 



174 



GENERAL GRANT 



to the opinions of any one as to his fitness for a 
military career. General Hamer, the member of 
Congress, and Mr. Jesse Grant, the father, were 
estranged from each other. Upon the failure of 
General Hamer's first appointee, he named young 
Grant as a tender of reconciliation. Ignorant of 
the names and persons of Jesse Grant's children, 
he combined in the letter of appointment the 
names of two of the boys, and thus gave to Gen- 
eral Grant the initials U. S., which he was com- 
pelled to carry through his course at the Acad- 
emy, though always under protest. Finally, Gen- 
eral Grant accepted with satisfaction, and as a 
tribute to his mother, the change which General 
Hamer had made. This change of name, though 
wholly accidental and against the wishes of Gen- 
eral Grant, was made the occasion of serious at- 
tacks upon his character in the campaign of 1868. 
In estimating General Grant's claims to be con- 
sidered a statesman, it is to be said, first, that states- 
manship does not consist in the ability to look with 
equal favor upon the contending parties in politics. 
General Grant was a party man. He was not in- 
tense in his feelings, and he was always moderate 
in the expression of his opinions. In early life he 
was a Whig. He thought that the war with Mexi- 
co was an unjust undertaking, and he took a part 
in it under a sense of duty to the Government that 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN. 175 

had given him his education. He voted for Mr. 
Buchanan in 1856, but for personal rather than po- 
litical reasons. 

At the opening of the war, he saw the issue, and 
he accepted it. 

In a letter to Mr. Washburne, dated August, 
1863, he said : '' It became patent to my mind early 
in the rebellion that the North and South could 
never live at peace with each other except as one 
nation, and that without slavery. As anxious as I 
am to see peace established, I would not therefore 
be willing to see any settlement until this question 
is forever settled." 

This was a view, not of the soldier, but of the 
statesman, and yet, there were men in the North, 
in August, 1863, who were called statesmen, who 
did not see that slavery was the cause of the war, 
and that a permanent peace could be secured 
only by its destruction. 

If statesmanship be limited to those who pursue 
their objects in politics and government by indi- 
rect methods, then General Grant had no claim to 
be called a statesman. His methods were as direct 
in peace as they were in war. When he spoke, the 
hearer knev/ exactly what the speaker then thought. 
And if the subject of conversation concerned the 
hearer, he might assume, safely, that he would be 
advised at once of any change of opinion or purpose. 



176 GENERAL GRANT 

When he thought it unwise to express his views 
or to declare his opinions he had the power to re- 
main silent. Reticence, however, was not the 
habit of his life nor the dictate of his nature, but 
a custom to which he fled when his views wxre not 
matured, or w^hen the expression of them might 
affect unfavorably a public measure or the for- 
tunes of an individual. 

He avoided councils' of war, but by informal 
conferences he gathered the views and received 
the suggestions of the officers about him. Conse- 
quently, the orders that he gave did not overrule 
the publicly-expressed opinions of any of his asso- 
ciates. 

He had neither obstinacy nor pride of opinion. 
At a critical moment in our foreign affairs the 
President had received the impression that a new 
policy in an important particular would be wise, or 
he was at least considering the m.easure, and he 
brought it to the attention of the Cabinet. When 
two members had expressed opinions adverse to 
the suggestion, and given their reasons, the Presi- 
dent introduced a new topic, and he never again 
referred to the subject. 

In a limited sense he carried military ideas into 
civil affairs. When and where he conferred power 
he reposed trust and placed responsibility. 

Neither as General of the Army, nor as Presi- 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN. 



177 



dent of the United States, did he assume to himself 
credit for what had been done by others. Indeed, 
he often accorded to his subordinates a larger 
share of credit than they claimed. And there is 
no surer test than this of real greatness. 

Those who reach results only b}^ dull, continu- 
ous labor are like the men who gather wealth by 
slow and tedious processes. Every gain stands for 
so much toil — burdensome toil, never to be forgot- 
ten. The great things of life are the products of 
truly great men. The labor with them is slight ; 
the recollection is not husbanded ; and there is al- 
w^ays present the consciousness that other equally 
important results might be attained easily. Such 
men are not misers of deeds ; they are not jealous ; 
they are not harassed by the fear of rivals. They 
concede much to others, and they demand for 
themselves only what is freely accorded. 

If wc pause here, and exclude from our 
thoughts the Administrations of Washington and 
Lincoln, will General Grant suffer as a civil magis- 
trate by a comparison with any other President of 
the Republic ? 

As a man, who more humane, more modest, 
more considerate of the rights of the humble ? 

As a magistrate, who more just in small things 
as well as great, or more devoted to peace, or 
more advanced in his ideas of Indian policy, or 



178 GENERAL GRANT 

more scrupulous in the assertion of every national 
right, or more vigorous in the maintenance of the 
public faith, or more jealous of the honor of the 
country ? 

And which of all the other Administrations has 
done as much to diminish the public burdens, to 
lift up and to sustain the public credit ; and which 
of them all has done as much to ameliorate the bar- 
barism of war, or by a conspicuous example to 
avert war itself ? 

And, except Washington and Lincoln, who of 
all the long line of Presidents, to so great an extent, 
possessed the confidence and commanded the re- 
spect of princes and peoples throughout the civil- 
ized world? 

In one particular General Grant was more fort- 
unate in his experience than either General Wash- 
ington or Mr. Lincoln. He visited the principal 
countries of the world, and he saw and conversed 
with their rulers. In foreign lands he made ad- 
dresses to public bodies, and, although he was not 
an orator, and although he was destitute of art or 
rhetoric in speech, he never uttered a sentence that 
an enemy could criticise or that a friend would 
blush to repeat. Educated by his knowledge of 
other forms of government and by an acquaintance 
with rulers — greater, I imagine, than was ever en- 
joyed by any other person — he returned from his 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN. 179 

travels not less an American in habit, in sentiment, 
in devotion to the country, than when he left Ga- 
lena in 1 86 1. 

In the literary-political use of the word. General 
Grant was not a statesman. He was not learned 
in international law ; he was not acquainted with 
the diplomatic history of Europe, nor can it be 
claimed that he was conversant with the diplomatic 
history of his own country. 

He could not have originated and he would not 
have accepted any process or scheme of indirection 
in the business of government. His claim to states- 
manship rests where his military fame rests. His 
qualities were practical. He saw things as they 
were. There was no glamour before his eyes, and 
he estimated the results of passing events Avith a 
degree of accuracy that seemed prophetic. But, 
more than all, his sense of justice could not be 
warped. Therefore he exacted of others only 
what they were bound to yield, and he was ready 
to grant to others what was right without delay 
and without debate. His statesmanship had no 
other art or magic in it than what may be found in 
the neighborhood relations of an honest country- 
people. 

In General Grant's military career there were 
great days — steps by which he ascended to the 
heights at once so conspicuous and dazzling. 



l8o GENERAL GRANT 

And begone forever the absurd idea that he was 
the child of luck, the favorite of Fortune ; and 
begone the notion that, when he came to places 
of power and trust, places of power and trust 
were free from responsibiUty, peril, or danger of 
ruin ! For twelve years in Avar and in peace, and 
for a period of three years and more when there 
was neither war nor peace, he stood in elevated 
and responsible places, and always exhibiting un- 
bounded patriotism with adequate ability in peace, 
and an absolute supremacy of generalship in 
war. 

These are not the accidents of any man's life. 
They are the natural results of innate power. 

If, then. General Grant's successful military ca- 
reer was not an accident, it may be possible to dis- 
cover some of the qualities or faculties on which 
his success was based. First of all, his skill to 
plan a movement or a campaign, and his ability to 
execute his plan, were in harmony. The ability to 
plan with coolness and care, and the power to exe- 
cute with energy, celerity, and continuing fortitude, 
are not often combined in the same person. In all 
these qualities General Grant was highly endowed. 
His mind was occupied during the winter of 1862 
-61 with the plan of the campaign which ended 
with the commencement of the siege of Vicksburg 
in May, 1863. Sherman's march to the sea was 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN. i8i 

forecast in a letter to General Sherman dated the 
4th day of April, 1864. 

Next, his topographical faculty was only less 
than real genius. In a military sense, his cam- 
paigns were in an unknown country. The region 
south of the Ohio and Potomac was, in a large 
part, destitute of good roads. It was covered by 
forests miles in extent and traversed by ranges of 
mountains in some sections and by rivers and bay- 
ous in others. No just comparison can be insti- 
tuted between military operations in Europe, 
where well-built roads are described in books and 
laid down on maps, and kindred operations in the 
bottom-lands of the Mississippi, or in the wilder- 
nesses and swamps of Virginia, or the mountain- 
regions of Tennessee and Alabama, 

The results indicate that General Grant could 
estimate with a reasonable degree of accuracy the 
value of a given number of men for defensive or 
offensive war. Very rarely was it true that his 
force at any given point was inadequate, and not 
often was there an excess. At the close of a 
day, whether his forces had been hard pressed or 
were victorious, his judgment was accurate, usu- 
ally, as to the condition of the opposing army. 
Added to these high qualities, and in addition to 
a power, quality, or faculty, which can not be de- 
scribed nor specified, he had faith in the justice of 



l82 GENERAL GRANT 

the national cause and faith in its ultimate tri- 
umph. 

His experience in Mexico had enlarged, and, 
without exaggeration, we may say that it had per- 
fected, his training at West Point. He served un- 
der General Taylor and then under General Scott. 
In his own language, he was in as many battles in 
Mexico as it was possible for any one man to be in. 
On several occasions he distinguished himself by 
his courage, and by manifestations of that tact for 
which he became conspicuous in the war of the re- 
beUion. He left Mexico with an exalted opinion of 
the military abilities of Taylor and Scott, and that 
opinion he retained to the end of his life. He has 
left, however, one criticism upon the conduct of 
the war in Mexico. General Scott moved his army 
from Vera Cruz in four divisions, a day apart, and 
upon the same line. This order General Grant 
criticises ; but he also criticises all his own cam- 
paigns, and says, finally, that the campaign against 
Vicksburg is the only one which in his opinion 
could not have been improved. General Grant 
made mistakes, but it may not be judicious for a 
civihan who never saw a battle, or for an officer 
who never won a battle, to marshal the mistakes ol 
a general who never lost a battle. 

When the blood of the men of Middlesex and 
Essex was shed in the streets of Baltimore, General 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN. 183 

Grant was eight days less than thirty-nine years of 
age. President Lincoln had already issued his call 
for seventy-five thousand men. General Grant re- 
sponded to that call, and by his neighbors and 
townsmen, although he was not a voter, he was 
chosen to preside at a public meeting. By the aid 
of a prompter, but with a stammering tongue, he 
was able to state the purpose for which the people 
had convened. That was his first great day. Not 
distinguished by anj^thing that he said or did. 
Not distinguished by his tender of service to the 
country. Tens on tens of thousands were then 
tendering their services and crowding forward for 
duty. To him and to the country it was a great 
day in the circumstance that it made possible his 
future career of usefulness and glory. In a mili- 
tary sense he was already a veteran. He had had 
fifteen years of training and service. But he made 
no demand for place ; none for consideration on 
that account. No claim — no pretension. His 
neighbors and the authorities were left to form 
their own estimate of the value of his experience. 
But that day he gained a place to stand, and from 
it he moved the world. 

He declined the captaincy of the company 
raised at Galena, but he went with it to Spring- 
field, where he was employed first in instructing a 
clerk in the army methods of keeping accounts, 



1 84 GENERAL GRANT 

and then in mustering and drilling the Illinois regi- 
ments for duty. Toward the end of May he made 
a tender of his services to the country through 
Lorenzo Thomas, then Adjutant- General of the 
Army of the United States. The letter was 
neither answered nor filed, and only recently was 
it rescued from the rubbish of the War Depart- 
ment ! General Pope offered his aid, but General 
Grant declined, saying that he Avould not receive 
indorsements for the privilege of fighting for his 
country. Upon the second call for three hundred 
thousand men, Governor Yates commissioned Grant 
as colonel of the Twenty-first Illinois Regiment. 

For the purposes of discipline the colonel 
marched his regiment from Springfield to Quincy. 
From thence it was moved to Mexico, Missouri, 
where Grant came to the command of three regi- 
ments. Just then, and upon an inspiration and 
without General Grant's knowledge, and in viola- 
tion of the civil-service rules, the Illinois delega- 
tion in Congress recommended his promotion to 
the rank of brigadier-general. 

His career had now commenced. He was as- 
signed to a military district and to the command of 
an army larger than that of General Scott when he 
entered the city of Mexico — an army of brave 
men, but of men not yet disciplined to the hard- 
ships and duties of military life. 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN. 185 

The battle of Belmont was fought the 7th day 
of November. That was Grant's second great day. 
Then his quaUties as a commander were for the 
first time tested. His army was composed of raw 
recruits — brave men, stimulated to the verge of in- 
subordination, by an anxious resolve to engage the 
enemy. General Grant had two purposes in view : 
First, to destroy the encampment at Belmont as a 
means of preventing the re-enforcement of Sterling 
Price, the Confederate commander in Missouri ; 
and, second, to discipline his troops by actual expe- 
rience in war. The battle of Belmont was bravely 
Avon ; but, when won, the discipline of the army was 
lost, and only the genius of the commander saved 
it from a disgraceful defeat that would have ended 
in its dispersion or capture. General Grant was 
the last man to leave the field, and he escaped capt- 
ure by running his horse from the bank of the 
river to the boat across a single gangway-plank. 

Grant's winter-quarters were in Cairo, at the 
junction of the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers. 
The Confederate troops still occupied Columbus, 
Kentucky, a few miles below Cairo. There were 
expeditions during the winter, and in the month of 
January General Grant reached the conclusion that 
the true line of operations was up the Tennessee 
and Cumberland Rivers, on which were situated 
Forts Henry and Donelson. That he might ob- 



1 86 GENERAL GRANT 

tain the sanction and authority of General Halleck, 
then in command of the department, he went to St. 
Louis and attempted to lay his plan before him. 
Without waiting for a full statement, General Hal- 
leck cut short the conversation, as if the plan were 
preposterous. Before the end of the month, how- 
ever. General Grant obtained the co-operation of 
Admiral Foote, and then Halleck yielded to their 
joint request. In less than twenty days thereafter 
Forts Henry and Donelson had fallen under the 
combined operations of the army and the navy. 
By the surrender of Donelson about fifteen thou- 
sand men became prisoners of war, and all the 
material of the fort fell into our hands. The 
Confederate loss by capture, death, and deser- 
tion, could not have been less than twenty thou- 
sand men. 

That was Grant's third great day. Great in 
the development of the character of the man, and 
great in the position attained. His letter to Gen- 
eral Buckner, in answer to the proposition for an 
armistice, reads like the letter of Cromwell to the 
parsons of Edinburgh, and it is the most remark- 
able production to be found in military literature 
since the three memorable words of Julius Csesar: 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN, 187 

Headquarters, Ariniy in the Field, 

Camp near Fort Donelson, 

February 16, 1862. 

General S. B. Buckner, Confederate Army : 

Sir: Yours of this date, proposing armistice 
and appointment of commissioners to settle terms 
of capitulation, is just received. No terms except 
an immediate and unconditional surrender can be 
accepted. I propose to move immediately upon 
your works. 

I am, sir, very respectfully. 

Your obedient servant, 
U. S. Grant, Brigadier-General. 

That day General Grant passed out from the 
ranks of the merely trained soldiers, and by uni- 
versal acclaim he was admitted into the small body 
of tested, trusted, and successful commanders. 

From that day forth he was to the nation the 
military chieftain on whom implicit reliance could 
be placed. And from that day forth the troops 
under his immediate command never apprehended 
a disastrous defeat, whatever might be the hard- 
ships and struggles and losses of a da}' or of a 
campaign. 

Then for the first time the magnitude of things 
already accomplished revealed to General Grant 
the possibilities of the future — a future, filled with 
13 



1 88 GENERAL GRANT 

greater events even, then opened, though indis- 
tinctly, before him. 

Of all his countrymen, one only, as far as we 
have knowledge, and he his superior officer, hesi- 
tated to award due honor for what had been done, 
and he, upon the poor pretext that General Grant 
had neglected to report the force and condition 
of his command, suspended him from duty. 

The 4th day of March, 1862, General Halleck 
suspended General Grant; and on the 13th day of 
the same month of March, with something of ex- 
planation and something of apology, he restored 
him to his command. Those nine days were sad, 
dreary days, when tears stood in the eyes of the 
discarded chieftain, but from his lips there was not 
one word of complaint. 

The battle of Shiloh began Sunday, the 6th of 
April, and, although at the close of that day of 
blood our troops were still upon the field, our 
lines had been forced back toward the river, and 
a mile of ground had been lost. General Grant 
was lame and on crutches, from an injury caused 
by the fall of his horse ; but he passed the night 
under a tree, exposed to a drenching rain, because 
he could not bear the sight of the wounded and 
dying men who were sheltered under a roof near by. 

At the end of the next day a decisive victory 
had been achieved. 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN. 189 

Important events followed. 

General Halleck assumed the command of the 
army in the field. In a few weeks thereafter he 
was made general-in-chief. He then transferred 
his headquarters to the city of Washington, but 
it was not until the 25th of October that General 
Grant was assigned to the command of the de- 
partment. Then for the first time Avas he in a 
position to devise and to act upon a comprehen- 
sive plan. 

The rebel garrisons in Kentuck}^ had then been 
abandoned. The Cumberland River was open to 
a point above Nashville, and the Tennessee was 
in our possession from its mouth to Eastport. 

Much had been accomplished, but the Missis- 
sippi River was still held by the rebels at Vicks- 
burg and Port Hudson. After the battle and vic- 
tory at Corinth, in October, the movement on 
Vicksburg began. 

The winter was spent in unsuccessful attempts 
to overcome the impediments interposed by the 
streams and bayous on the east and on the west 
of the Mississippi River, but in that winter, filled 
with toil, and suffering, and sacrifices, the final 
and successful plan of operations was matured. 

General Grant originated the plan, and he be- 
lieved in the possibility of its successful execution. 
And never was a commander better supported by 



190 



GENERAL GRANT 



his subordinates ; and never, perhaps, was there a 
body of men, the officers, the rank and file, more 
united or more resolute in the purpose to accom- 
plish what had been undertaken. 

The passage of the batteries on the Mississippi 
River at Vicksburg by the gunboats and trans- 
ports, the march of the army on the west bank of 
the river, the bridging of bayous, the crossing of 
the Mississippi, the landing upon the river-bottom 
between Bruinsburg and Grand Gulf, when the 
forces of the enemy within a circuit of fifty miles 
numbered not less than sixty thousand men, the 
battle and capture of the Highlands of Port Gib- 
son, the battles and victories of Raymond, of Jack- 
son, of Champion's Hill, of Black River Bridge, 
the final investment of Vicksburg, and all between 
the 1 6th of April and the 19th day of May, con- 
stitute a dramatic chapter in military history for 
which no parallel can be found in the annals of 
modern warfare. 

To be sure, Vicksburg had not fallen, but its 
capture was made certain. The Confederate forces 
had been divided. One army was within the forti- 
fications of the town, and soon to be subject to a 
close siege on all sides. The other army was to 
the south of the Big Black River, where it was 
confronted by General Sherman at the head of an 
adequate force. 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN, 



191 



In a few weeks, at farthest, Vicksburg and the 
army of Pemberton must surrender; the Missis- 
sippi River be opened for military purposes ; the 
Confederacy divided, the suppKes for the armies 
of the East diminished materially, and the down- 
fall of the Confederacy itself made certain beyond 
the possibilities of chance or fate. 

The surrender of Vicksburg, the 4th day of 
July, 1863, brought that memorable campaign to 
a close ; and with its close and the victory at 
Gettysburg all thought of failure was banished 
from the minds of the loyal citizens of the North. 

From this we turn now to his next great day. 

The fatal battle of Chickamauga was fought on 
the 19th and 20th days of September, 1863. Rose- 
crans retreated with his disorganized army to 
Chattanooga, soon to be followed by General 
George H. Thomas, who had held his ground 
at Chickamauga. The Confederates established 
themselves on Lookout Mountain, at the south- 
w^est and west of the town, and also upon Mis- 
sionary Ridge, which commanded the valley from 
the east and northeast. 

General Bragg, then in command of the Con- 
federate forces, constructed immediately a line of 
earthworks from the northerly point on Lookout 
Mountain to a point on Missionary Ridge near its 
southwestern extremity, and thence along the 



192 GENERAL GRANT 

Ridge to the north end. To the west was the 
long line of the Tennessee River, disappearing at 
the base of Lookout Mountain. 

To the north was the only open passage 
through which supplies were received from Nash- 
ville over a devastated country and by a circui- 
tous route not less than sixty miles in length. By 
the 20th of October the army was on half-rations, 
the animals were exhausted, and many thousands 
had died of starvation. A retreat under such cir- 
cumstances would have resulted in the loss of the 
army. At that moment the Department of the 
Mississippi was created, which included all the ter- 
ritory west of the AUeghanies, except the depart- 
ment of General Banks in the southwest, and Gen- 
eral Grant was placed in command. General Rose- 
crans was relieved immediately, and General 
George H. Thomas was assigned to his place. 

General Grant reached Chattanooga on the 
23d day of October, at nightfall. At that time 
the Confederate authorities, civil and military, had 
no doubt about the surrender of our army in a few 
days, and upon such terms as they should dictate. 
This was the opinion of Jefferson Davis, who had 
visited the theatre of war the 15th day of October. 
On the 24th of October, the day after Grant's ar- 
rival, the orders of detail were issued for raising 
the siege of Chattanooga ; and, on the 27th, the or- 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN. 193 

ders had been so far executed that the Army of 
the Cumberland was free to receive supplies and 
re-enforcements, and as early as the 29th of October 
it was on an independent footing, with an abun- 
dance of supplies and material of war, and prepar- 
ing for an offensive movement. That movement 
was made, and it terminated in the battle and vic- 
tory of Missionary Ridge. General Grant's own 
words are not an exaggeration : '' It would have 
been a victory to have got the army away from 
Chattanooga safely. It Avas manifold greater to 
defeat, and nearly destroy, the besieging army." 

The fruits of the victory were six thousand 
prisoners, forty pieces of artillery, seven thousand 
stands of small-arms, and large quantities of other 
material of war. 

The siege of Knoxville was raised and Burnside 
was set free, without a struggle, and without other 
assistance. Is it too much to claim that the Army 
of the Cumberland was saved by the presence and 
genius of General Grant? And, if not, then the 
day that he raised the siege of Chattanooga was a 
memorable day in his career. 

He then came to the command of all the armies 
of the republic — numbering a million men — a 
greater force than ever elsewhere or at any other 
time recognized the rule and leadership of one 
man. Proportionately great was the field of opera- 



194 GENERAL GRANT 

tions. Its boundaries were the line oi tlic Missis- 
sippi River, the frontier from beyond the Missis- 
sippi to the Atlantic Ocean, then along the coast 
of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico to Texas, 
with one army penetrating to the center of the 
Confederacy and others moving upon and besieg- 
ing Richmond ; and all without instructions from 
the President or War Department, and all without 
the aid of a council of war. The end was the 
surrender of Lee and the army of brave men who 
had stood at the gateway of the Confederacy for 
four years : Richmond fell, the leaders of the 
rebellion were dispersed, and the Union was 
saved. 

That was the great day of General Grant's life, 
and of the results of that day's doings no power, 
that is human merely, can form a just estimate. 
He lived to see the Union he had so contributed to 
save compacted and in a good degree harmonized. 
Not onl}^ had the institution of slavery disap- 
peared, but the ancient faith in the economy and 
rightfulness of slavery had disappeared also. Of 
all the millions of his fellow-citizens there was not 
one in power or station who ventured to avow his 
hostility to the Union, or to the fundamental insti- 
tutions of the Government under which we are 
living. These are the fruits of a victory to be en- 
joyed by us and by our successors through many. 



THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN. 195 

many generations — fruits to be shared equally by 
the vanquished and b}^ the victors. 

From that day forth the United States has been 
recognized as one of the leading nations of the 
world. Upon the opening of the rebellion in 1861, 
the enemies of republican institutions accepted the 
event with satisfaction, as furnishing proof conclu- 
sive that such institutions could not be maintained. 
The surrender of Lee in 1865 banished that idea 
from the minds of statesmen the world over. 

The tendency now everywhere is to local self- 
government, the aggregation of small states, the 
concentration of powers for national and interna- 
tional purposes, coupled with a system of responsi- 
bility on the part of the Executive. 

It was the theory of dynastic rulers that pop- 
ular governments were limited to small states. 
That error has now passed away, but by all former 
generations of European statesmen the United 
States was not treated as an exception. 

At present the attention of the world is fixed 
upon our system of government. Here institutions 
are free ; here everywhere there is local self-gov- 
ernment ; here, generally, the equal political rights 
of men are acknowledged ; here our institutions 
recognize no distinctions of race, and the thought 
of such distinctions is fast disappearing from the 
public mind ; and here the central Government is 



1^6 GENERAL GRANT 

endowed with ample powers for every exigency 
of national life. Here every man is a citizen, and 
every citizen is at the same time a member of the 
ruling class and a member of the subject class. 
The germs of this policy of national life, minute in 
its details and comprehensive in its scope, are 
found in the institutions of the colonies North and 
South, but their development was delayed until 
the Confederacy was overthrown, slavery de- 
stroyed, and the extreme doctrine of State rights 
had perished. 

The new Government rests upon co-ordinate 
political propositions — the equality of men in the 
States and the equality of States in the Union. 
The old Constitution recognized the equality of 
States, but there was no national citizenship and no 
recognition of the equality of men. 

Neither in principle nor in public policy was 
the change as important from the rule of George 
the Third to the Administration of General Wash- 
ington, as from the Administration of James Buch- 
anan to that of General Grant at the commence- 
ment of his second term. 

In this later period old ideas disappeared ; old 
institutions crumbled and fell ; new ideas were de- 
veloped, and new institutions were created. 

The overthrow of the Confederacy made possi- 
ble all these changes. The future of America was 



THE SOLDIER ANL STATESMAN. 197 

shaped by that event. The nation accepted the 
new ideas, it created new institutions, and it entered 
upon a new career. 

It is not for this day nor for this generation 
to estimate General Grant's share in contributing 
to these events so accompUshed. 

The Proclamation of Emancipation was made 
practical, absolute, and irreversible by the victories 
of General Grant. The Proclamation of Emanci- 
pation made the victories of General Grant possi- 
ble. Thus, by the combined labors of Lincoln and 
Grant, the system of slavery was abolished, and the 
Union re-established on the basis of the equality of 
men in the States and the equality of States in the 
Union. Thus are they united in fame, and thus 
are they destined to a common inheritance of 
glory. 

History will reject the language of eulogy, but 
it must deal with the important events which sig- 
nalize General Grant's military career. And can 
it fail to place him with the small number of great 
generals since Julius Csesar ? 

The successes of life are not accidents. For 
four years General Grant was tested by the se- 
verest ordeals. Other men might have saved the 
country ; but he only had the opportunity and the 
capacity to save the country. If, upon the record 
of General Grant, we deny to him intellectual pow- 



198 GENERAL GRANT. 

er of a high order, as well as genius in affairs of 
war, we have then no longer a test of greatness or 
superiority among men. 

Thus have I attempted to communicate my im- 
pressions concerning General Grant. I knew him 
when he was in health, in prosperit}^ and in power. 
I knew him when he was borne down by adversity 
and assailed by a fatal disease. In all conditions he 
was the same man. No change of fortune could 
change his character. He was imperturbable in 
spirit, obedient to the demands of justice, constant 
and faithful in his friendships, and to the last he 
was devoted to the country that he had served 
and saved. 



GENERAL GRANT— THIRD TERM.^ 

In politics, morals, and law there is a field for 
presumption. The field is a limited one, usually, 
but within it the conclusions drawn are as trust- 
worthy as are those which, in the broader field of 
testimony, rest upon positive proof. 

In politics, and in the light of this day, no pre- 
sumption can be more just and reasonable than the 
presumption that every Democrat is opposed to 
the election of General Grant to the presidency for 
a third time. And this opposition by Democrats 
is not on account of the example of Washington, or 
of the tradition of a century, or of the resolution of 
the House of Representatives of 1875; for they 
were quite as fiercely opposed to his first election 
in 1868, to his second election in 1872, when the ex- 
ample of Washington was inapplicable, when the 
tradition of the fathers could not be cited, when 
the resolution of the House of Representatives did 
not exist. 

Among Democrats the most conspicuous Demo- 

* From " The North American Review," April, 1880. 



200 GENERAL GRANT, 

crat in this opposition to General Grant was Judge 
Black, of Pennsylvania ; and, in the March number 
of *' The North American Review," he gives his 
friends the benefit of his argument against the 
third election of General Grant, and inflicts upon 
his enemies the full force of his passions. He has 
seen nothing good or even hopeful in the events 
of the last twenty years ; and he has read of noth- 
ing bad in the annals of Rome, where chiefly his 
studies appear to have been, whether as republic or 
empire, which he does not apprehend for America 
in case of the election of General Grant for a third 
term. His argument against the election of any 
person to the presidency a third time is based 
upon the example of Washington and the declara- 
tions of Jefferson. The authorities are good, and, 
when there was no trustworthy history, either for 
example or warning, except that of ancient Rome 
and the histories of the mediaeval and feudal states 
of Europe, the argument itself was not bad. 

In the course of his article Judge Black has 
made many references to ancient Rome. His ex- 
cellence herein is admitted. At best I can make 
but one. Gibbon says of the various modes of 
worship which prevailed in the Roman world that 
''all were considered by the people as equall}^ true, 
by the philosophers as equally false, and by the 
magistrates as equally useful." There is no vio- 



THIRD TERM, 201 

lence in the assumption that Judge Black has been 
so absorbed by the thought that the example of 
Washington and the teachings of Jefferson could 
be made useful to the Democratic party in this its 
exigency, that he has neglected to consider with 
care the question whether, after a century of expe- 
rience in free popular government, it is indeed true 
that the example of Washington in this respect is 
the only remaining bulwark for the protection of 
our assailed and imperiled liberties. If this be so, 
then the reputation of Washington will need a 
more ardent — perhaps I may not be permitted to 
say a more able — defender than even Judge Black 
himself. 

Washington was President of the Convention 
which framed the Constitution of the United 
States. That Constitution makes every male citi- 
zen who has attained the age of thirty-fiv^e years 
eliofible and re-elisrible, without limitation as to 
times, to the office of President of the United 
States. If the peril to the country from the re- 
peated election of the same person to the presi- 
dency was believed by Washington and his associ- 
ates to be such as Judge Black now represents it, 
then Washington and his associates are AvhoUy 
without excuse in their neglect of a great public 
duty. Nor is it an answer or defense to say that 
Washington intended to leave an example to his 



202 GENERAL GRANT. 

countrymen which, in the course of time, would, as 
a tradition, become as powerful for the protection 
of their rights and liberties as would be a written 
constitutional inhibition. Life is uncertain ; death 
is certain ; and in 1787 Washington could have had 
no assurance that he would be permitted by Divine 
Providence to hold the office of President for eight 
3^ears, and at the close to give an example of volun- 
tary abstention from w^orldly honors which should 
not only receive the approval of the living genera- 
tion, but also command the respect and obedience 
of his countrymen in all ages of the republic. 

Mr. Jefferson was not a member of the Conven- 
tion, and it is well known that its proceedings in 
many particulars were not approved by him. But 
to Mr. Jefferson, more than to any one else, is the 
country indebted for the first eleven articles of 
amendment to the Constitution — articles designed 
to render the liberties of the people more secure 
against the encroachments of power. But these 
amendments are silent in regard to the presidential 
office. Provision is made, however, that persons 
charged w^ith crime shall have a perpetual consti- 
tutional right to compulsory process for obtaining 
witnesses in their favor ; that in all suits at com- 
mon law, where the value in controversy exceeds 
twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be 
preserved ; and yet no constitutional safeguard is 



THIRD TERM, 



203 



erected against a manifest peril, a continuing men- 
ace to the institutions and liberties of an entire 
people. 

If Washington and Jefferson estimated the peril 
as Judge Black now says the peril was estimated 
by them, and as in fact the peril really is, who is 
sufficient to offer a defense, an excuse, or even an 
apology for the Father of his Country or the Apos- 
tle of Liberty? The original Constitution was 
wrought out '\\\ the presence and under the lead of 
Washington, and the amendments were framed at 
the dictation of Jefferson. Eight words in the 
Constitution or in an amendment would have fur- 
nished ample protection for all time. The words 
are not there, and why not? Surely not because 
Washington and Jefferson were not patriotic men, 
nor because they were not far-seeing men, but be- 
cause upon reflection they thought it unwise to 
place any limitation upon the power of the people 
to elect their rulers at stated times and in pre- 
scribed ways. The country is not lacking in ven- 
eration for Washington and Jefferson. That ven- 
eration will survive the criticism of Judge Howe, 
it will outlive the defense of Judge Black. And 
may one inquire whether there is anything in the 
example of Washington which warrants the opin- 
ion that this Government has not constitutional 
power to protect its own life ; or anything in the 



204 GENERAL GRANT. 

teachings of Jefferson inconsistent with the emanci, 
pation of the slaves, their elevation to citizenship, 
their equality under the Constitution of the coun« 
try ; or if there is anything in the example or 
teachings of Washington or Jefferson which justi- 
fies Judge Black and the party that he represents 
in the attempt that was made to overthrow the 
Union, in the resistance to emancipation, and in the 
continuing effort to subvert the Government by 
the forcible suppression of the popular will? In 
every age there are those who build the tombs of 
the prophets and garnish the sepulchres of the 
righteous, and yet deny justice to the living gener- 
ation of men. 

If Judge Black^s argument against a third term 
shall receive only that degree of favor which has 
been accorded to his public teachings for the last 
twenty years, he may be assured that the chief rea- 
son is to be found in the conduct of the party with 
which he is identified. That conduct has awak- 
ened the most serious apprehensions in the public 
mind touching the security of property and of per- 
sonal political rights ; and these apprehensions not 
only justify but require the people to place the 
helm of government in the hands of the man best 
qualified to guide the ship of state safely through 
stormy seas. In quiet times the tradition of the 
fathers would be respected, and this without a 



THIRD TERM, 



205 



careful examination of its value or of its applica- 
bility to modern affairs. It is to the teachings of 
Judge Black, and the associates of Judge Black, 
that the country is indebted for the circumstances 
in our public life which compel us to canvass the 
tradition upon its merits, to examine the circum- 
stances in which it had its origin, ancj to consider 
and determine whether its authority is such, or its 
intrinsic value such, that in a grave exigency in 
public affairs, and in obedience to that tradition 
alone, the man best qualified to protect personal 
rights and to defend public interests shall be ex- 
cluded from the public service. If a strong man 
is needed at the head of the Government, the ne- 
cessity arises from the circumstance that the spirit 
of rebellion, of resistance to the Constitution, is 
manifested by a large class of citizens. Those citi- 
zens, without exception, are Democrats, and they 
receive aid and encouragement from the Demo, 
cratic part3^ It is the purpose of the Republican 
party to suppress that spirit ; to render it power- 
less, absolutely, both in personal and in public 
affairs. And it may happen that, in accomplishing 
this result, the example of Washington and the 
tradition of the fathers will be disregarded. I ad- 
mit the example, I recognize the tradition, and, 
with these admissions, it is my purpose to consider 
their binding force upon the country, their histori- 



2o6 GENERAL GRANT. 

cal origin, their intrinsic value as guides in public 
affairs. 

There has been a serious effort to establish the 
proposition that what is called '' the tradition of 
the fathers " is as binding upon the country as a 
limitation upon the power of the people would be 
if the restriction \vere a part of the Constitution 
itself. Judge Black sustains the notion, and gives 
to it the benefit of his rhetoric and his emphasis. 
Statement alone is sufficient upon this point. Argu- 
ment is unnecessary. The opinions of Washington 
and Jefferson are entitled to the highest considera- 
tion as opinions — nothing more. We refuse to al- 
low the hands of dead men to control the soil of 
the country ; and shall we without inquiry, w^ith- 
out a judgment of our own, permit the opinions of 
dead men to control the thought and the policy of 
the country? We have changed, indeed in some 
particulars we have annihilated, the Constitution 
of Washington, the Constitution of the fathers, 
and therefor take equal honor for ourselves and 
for them, in the belief that if they were among us 
they would accept and ratify with acclaim the 
changes that have been made. 

And is the unwritten law more sacred? May 
the people annul the written law of the fathers, 
and still be bound perpetually by their traditions ? 
It would not be strange if in these later days, and 



THIRD TERM. 



207 



for a particular reason, the importance of Washing- 
ton's example had been unduly magnified. When 
he prepared his Farewell xA.ddress to his country- 
men, the most important document that ever came 
from his pen, he omitted all reference to his own 
example in retiring from the presidential office 
at the end of the second term, as imposing upon 
all his successors a corresponding practice. In 
November, 1806, the Legislature of Vermont nomi- 
nated Mr. Jefferson for a third election to the 
presidency. If he had then realized the dangers 
of such a proceeding as they are now set forth by 
Judge Black, would he have waited till December, 
1807, before he announced his purpose not to be a 
candidate for re-election? 

It is a satisfaction that, even at this somewhat 
advanced stage of the discussion, I am in accord 
with Judge Black upon one point. He says, '' The 
mere authority of names, however great, ought not 
to command our assent." This is a sound proposi- 
tion in ethics, in politics, and in law. i\ll through 
these weary pages I am endeavoring to demon- 
strate its wisdom in matters of politics, and I re- 
lieve the tediousness of the hour by a single illus- 
tration designed to show its importance in matters 
of law. 

Judge Black, speaking of real estate, and not of 
politics, says, " A lease for years, renewable and 



2o8 GENERAL GRANT. 

always renewed, gives the tenant an estate without 
end, and makes him lord of the fee." This sen- 
tence is admirably turned, and its rhetoric is above 
criticism or complaint : but as a legal proposition 
it is only true when some words, possibly implied 
by the writer, are clearly expressed. It should 
be written, " A lease for years, renewable at the 
will of the tenant, and always renewed, gives the 
tenant an estate without end, and makes him lord 
of the fee"; and, thus written, its inapplicability 
to the question under discussion is fully exposed. 
The tenure of the office of President of the United 
States is not renewable at the will of the tenant, 
and therefore the tenant can never become lord of 
the fee. It is only renewable at the will of the 
lord of the fee — the people ; and, being so renew- 
able only, the fee must ever remain in the lord, 
however often the lease may be renewed. 

But it is not open to doubt that there has been 
a general disinclination in the American public 
mind to the election of the same person to the 
presidency a third time ; and there is as little 
doubt that that disinclination is less general and 
less vigorous than it was three years ago. It is, 
however, as old as the Government. It had its 
roots in the experience of the colonists. In Europe 
hereditary power had fostered standing armies, 
and standing armies had maintained hereditary 



THIRD TERM. 209 

power. Both ^vere the enemies of personal liberty 
and popular rights. It was the purpose of the 
founders of our Government to render standinsf 
armies unnecessary, and the possession of heredi- 
tary power impossible. If the experience of a 
century is an adequate test, the end they sought 
has been attained. They had observed, also, that 
the possession of power, by virtue of ofhce, for un- 
limited periods of time, tended to the establish- 
ment of dynastic systems and to their recognition 
by the people. Hence provision was made in all 
our Constitutions, State and national, for frequent 
elections in the legislative and executive depart- 
ments of Government. But these apprehensions, 
whether v/ise or not, did not lead the founders of 
the republic to the adoption of a system which 
limited the powers of the people or cast a doubt 
upon their capacity for self-government. 

The term of the presidential ofhce was limited 
to four years, but the constitutional ability of the 
people to continue one person in the ofhce through 
many terms was admitted without limit. If the 
men who framed the Constitution apprehended 
evils from a third or even a second election of the 
same person to the presidency, they accepted those 
possible evils in preference to a limitation of the 
power of the people in the choice of their rulers. 
The tenure of office is fixed, but the Constitution 



2IO GENERAL GRANT, 

is silent upon the question whether it is wise or 
unwise to continue the same person in office for 
more than one term. 

Washington avoided a third term, and his ex- 
ample has had large influence in leading the coun- 
try to accept the opinion that a contrary policy is 
fraught with danger to the public liberties. Wash- 
ington's motives and reasons are not clear. He 
was, however, no longer young. His best years 
had been spent in the public service, and he natu- 
rally yearned for the peace and quiet of private 
life. Nor can there be a doubt that, superadded to 
these personal considerations, was the thought that 
his example might serve as a restraint in case of 
the appearance of a popular leader who should 
seek to subvert the Government through succes- 
sive elections to the presidency. 

The system of government which Washington 
and his associates had inaugurated w'as a novel 
system. Government of the people, by the peo- 
ple, and for the people was an experiment. No 
one could then foresay what their capacity would 
prove to be in emergencies, or even in quiet times. 
The power of rulers in dynastic countries Avas 
much more absolute a century ago than it now is, 
and the extent of that power measured the danger 
to which, in the estimation of our fathers, free peo- 
ples wxre exposed. 



THIRD TERM, 211 

Washington's example was set off and made 
impressive by the phenomenon of a Corsican cor- 
poral passing at a bound, as it were, from the ruins 
of a republic to the throne of an empire, displacing 
kings and rulers, and founding a family dynasty 
that has lasted nearly a century, either in power 
or contending for power. 

The experience of Europe gave rise to the 
opinion in America that it is dangerous to permit 
the same person to continue in the chief executive 
office for a long period of time ; but the tradition- 
ary idea that the danger-line in the presidential 
office is the line between the second and third 
terms, is due to the influence of Washington's 
example. 

Aside from governments in which office is con- 
ferred by popular suffrage constitutionally enjoyed 
and exercised, there are three methods of gaining 
and holding power: 

I. Physical force. 2. The claim of a right to 
rule, sometimes called the divine right to rule, 
which is the result of the enjoyment of power in 
a family for a long period of time. 3. Recognized 
mental and moral supremacy. 

As to the first mode — the establishment of a 
personal or family government in the United States 
by physical force — it is to be said that the success 
of such an undertaking, or even its attempt, is too 



212 GENERAL GRANT. 

remote in the logic of events, and too improbable 
when judged by experience or tested by reason, 
to warrant argument or to command attention. 
The destruction of a government is always a pos- 
sible fact, and no one can predict the consequences ; 
but, if its overthrow is by force, the aggressive 
actors are parties out of powxr, and its defense, 
whether vigorous or weak, is by those in power. 

Moreover, it is to be said that the opportunity 
for a president to seize the Government by force 
is as great in the first or second term as it can be 
in the third ; and the probability that a man who 
had not been tem.pted, or who had not yielded, in 
the first and second terms would prove faithless 
in the third, is a view of human nature contrary to 
all human experience. And there is less prob- 
ability that the possession of the presidency for 
eight, or twelve, or twenty years would induce 
even one person in the United States to admit a 
divine right to rule either in the occupant of the 
office or his family. 

Lastly, if mental or moral supremacy were rec- 
ognized, that recognition would find expression in 
the United States by an election through constitu- 
tional means. 

There are two theories of political action, the- 
ories inconsistent with each other, both unsound 
and both maintained and propagated by the same 



THIRD TERM, 21 3 

body of theorists in matters of government. One 
theory is that men in subordinate places should be 
continued in those places as long as they are faith- 
ful and competent, and this without regard to 
their political opinions or to the qualifications of 
contestants; and the other theory is that in the 
chief place of government, where experience, ca- 
pacity, and integrity are of more consequence than 
in any subordinate place, the occupant should be 
excluded after four or certainly after eight years' 
experience, however competent, wise, and just he 
may have proved himself to be. If a public pohcy 
were to be based upon reason, the stronger argu- 
ments would be found in favor of continuing the 
President in office as long as his services were ac- 
ceptable to the people. 

In truth, however, there is no field for argu- 
ment. No man has a right to an office, but it is 
the right of the people to select men for place who 
in their opinion are best qualified to do the work 
they wish to have done. 

Where, by the Constitution, appointments are 
vested in the President, in the courts, or in the 
heads of departments, the same right rests in those 
constitutional agents of the people ; and it becomes 
their duty to continue men in office when the pub- 
lic interests will be best promoted by so doing, and 
to remove men from office when their places can 



214 



GENERAL GRANT. 



be supplied by persons more capable of rendering 
efficient service. There can be no title to office, 
and there ought to be no rule of absolute exclusion 
from office. 

In public affairs, as in private life, it is true usu- 
ally that our apprehensions are not awakened by 
the dangers that actually menace us. Executive 
power and the influence of office-holders are the 
dangers apprehended that now most excite the 
public mind. It may not be out of place to say 
that there are less than eighty thousand office-hold- 
ers under the national Government, and that of 
these not twenty thousand are appointed by the 
President directly, the rest receiving their commis- 
sions from heads of department and the courts. 
This army of office-holders numbers one to about 
six hundred inhabitants, and there are probably 
not another eighty thousand intelligent men in the 
country whose political influence is less than theirs. 
If they support an Administration, they are char- 
acterized as sycophants ; if they put themselves in 
opposition to it, they are branded as ingrates ; and 
if they are silent, they are treated as cowards. 
There is indeed no place in politics for an office- 
holder by executive appointment where he can 
exert the influence that is accorded to an inde- 
pendent, energetic private citizen. Office-holders 
should be free to express their opinions ; above all; 



THIRD TERM. 21 5 

they should be free from any constraint proceeding 
from the appointing power ; but in no aspect of af- 
fairs are they a dangerous class in our politics. 
And it is a kindred weakness to suppose that the lib- 
erties of the country are in danger from executive 
powers. Executive authority is diminishing in 
China, Japan, Russia, Germany, and England, and 
in all those countries the jurisdiction of the legisla- 
tive branches of government is broader, firmer, 
and more respected than ever before. With us 
power tends toward Congress, and in Congress to 
the House of Representatives. In these four years 
we have seen the just and proper authority of the 
President restrained and paralyzed by the House 
of Representatives, and during the Administration 
of Andrew Johnson his dispositions and purposes 
were checked and thwarted by the same branch of 
the Government. 

The liberties of the country can not be subverted 
as long as that branch of the Government which 
can open and close the Treasury of the nation at its 
sovereign will is true to its duty ; and that branch 
will remain true to its duty while the constituency 
is both intelligent and honest. I venture to assert 
that there is no present danger from the compara- 
tively small body of office-holders, none from presi- 
dential patronage, and nothing of imminent peril, 
indeed, from the numerous evils marshaled under 



2i6 GENERAL GRANT. 

the term maladministration^ from which no country 
is ever entirely free. 

With these observations upon questions of 
minor importance, I turn to the one topic of su- 
preme interest and of real peril — the purpose of 
the old slaveholding class to subvert the Govern- 
ment by securing the rule of a minority, first in 
the South, and then consequently in all the affairs 
of the repubhc ; and I shall then proceed to 
show how this purpose may be most successfully 
thwarted by the election of General Grant. 

We all know that this undertaking in the end 
must prove a failure ; but the speedy overthrow of 
the scheme, and the speedy dissipation of the idea 
on which the scheme rests, are essential to the rep- 
utation and welfare of the country. On the other 
hand, the prosecution of the scheme is an obstacle 
to business, a constant peril to the public peace, a 
direct assault upon the interests of labor in every 
section, and a menace to free government in all 
parts of the world. It is a delusion, a criminal de- 
lusion, to accept the notion that there can be un- 
broken peace and continuing prosperity while any 
number of citizens are, as a public policy of com- 
munities and States, deprived of their equal rights. 

And it is a delusion not less criminal and even 
more dangerous to accept the suggestion that the 
old free States, containing a majority of the people 



THIRD TERM. 



217 



of the country, will peacefully, and through a 
series of years, submit to the rule of men in the 
executive and legislative branches of the Govern- 
ment, who take office and wield power through 
proceedings that are systematically tainted with 
fraud or crimsoned with innocent blood. 

It is clearly established beyond the demands of 
legal or moral proof that there are persons in the 
Senate of the United States who have no better 
right in equity to the places they occupy than they 
have to seats in the Commons of Great Britain. 
The same is true of the House of Representatives, 
and these persons constitute the majority in each 
branch. Thus has our former indifference to the 
fortunes of our brethren in the South been visited 
by a direct penalty upon ourselves. 

I proceed now to state our demand of the 
South, and in that statement I disclose also the evil 
of which we complain. 

Our demand, speaking generally, is, that in all 
the States of the Union every person who has a 
right to vote shall be permitted to vote ; that his 
vote shall be counted ; that it shall be honestly val- 
ued ; and that the governments created by the ma- 
jorities shall be set up and recognized. The con- 
test is upon this proposition, and upon this propo- 
sition the contest will be waged until it is accepted, 
practically, in all parts of the Union. Not from 



2i8 GENERAL GRANT. 

hostility to the South will this contest be carried 
on ; but in regard to the rights of our fellow-citi- 
zens there and in defense of our rights as citizens 
of the republic will the contest be prosecuted to 
the end, whether near or remote. Under the S3^s- 
tem of suppression and wrong now existing, the 
vote of a white citizen in South Carolina or Mis- 
sissippi is, as a fact in government, equal to the 
votes of three . citizens in Massachusetts, New 
York, or Illinois. Such inequahty can not long 
continue, but, if its long continuance were possible, 
it would work the destruction of the Government 
itself. The issue, then, is a vital one ; and, if the 
ultimate result be not uncertain, then the more im- 
portant it is to bring the contest to a close speedily. 
Delay gives birth to hopes that must perish, embit- 
ters the contestants, and checks or paralyzes pri- 
vate and public prosperity. 

There is not a citizen of the North who is free 
from responsibility or beyond the reach of this evil. 
It touches with its malignant hand the humblest 
laborer and the wealthiest capitalist. The laborer 
of the South is driven in poverty from his home, 
and the laborer of the North is cursed with an un- 
natural and unhealthy competition. Capital loaned 
or used in the South is without security. It finds 
no protection either in local justice or in public 
faith. By the force of events the laboring popula- 



THIRD TERM. 219 

tion of the South is driven into the North, and by 
the force of the same events the South is closed to 
the labor and capital of the world. In many as- 
pects the South is the chief sufferer. Even now it 
approaches the admission that the abohtion of 
slav^ery was a good, and in twenty years more it 
will accept the truth that there was no way to 
prosperity except through justice to the black 
man. 

As States multiply, as population increases, as 
representative constituencies are enlarged, the 
power of the individual voter and of the State 
diminishes. When the population of the Union 
was but three million and the States were but 
thirteen, the voice of Massachusetts in the Senate 
was as two to twenty-six. In less than a hundred 
years, two thirds of her power, speaking relatively 
and numerically, have disappeared. Her vote in 
the Senate is now only two in seventy-six, or one in 
thirty-eight. 

During the same period, however, the means of 
communication and of influence have increased 
even more rapidly than has been the increase of 
population. Maine and California are nearer to 
each other than were New Hampshire and Penn- 
sylvania a hundred years ago ; and there are now 
no States so distant from the capital of the country 
as were South Carolina and Georgia when the 
15 



220 GENERAL GRANT. 

Union was formed. The articles of " The Feder- 
alist " were delayed through successive weeks be- 
fore they reached impatient readers in distant parts 
of the country, while now the news of the morning, 
the market, the courts, the Congress, is furnished 
with equal accuracy and fullness in Washington, in 
Maine, in Texas, in California, and in Oregon. If 
the power of the individual ballot is less than it 
once was, the idea behind the ballot has gained a 
hundred-fold in opportunity for development and 
influence. 

We are now, therefore, more concerned about 
the idea which directs the ballot than we are about 
the name, residence, or race of the voter. All 
opinions and all politics have become local, and all 
opinions and all politics have become national. 
Political outrages in Maine, Louisiana, and South 
Carolina disturb and endanger the poHtical rights 
of men in every voting precinct and school dis- 
trict of the Union. The sovereignty of the States 
is not disputed seriously ; the supremacy, the neces- 
sary, the inevitable, the constitutional supremacy 
of the nation is everywhere more and more recog- 
nized ; but there are communities which deny to 
the General Government the power to protect a 
citizen of the United States in his political rights 
against domestic violence, and yet have no scruples 
about invoking the aid of the Union against yellow 



THIRD TERM, 221 

fever imported from Havana, or pleuro-pneumonia 
threatened from Holland or Liverpool. 

We are engaged in warm debate over an an- 
cient tradition, whose origin is uncertain and 
whose value is doubtful ; we vex the public ear 
with discussions touching appointments to office, 
the dangers of executive patronage, the power of 
office-holders, the duties on quinine and steel ; and 
yield a quiet submission to the rule of a Senate and 
House of Representatives whose majorities were 
secured by the grossest usurpations, made possible 
only by the perpetration of the bloodiest of crimes. 

In fine, public attention and the powers of Gov- 
ernment are directed to topics of minor and tem- 
porary importance, while the real peril to which 
the country is exposed is either denied, or its con- 
sideration is avoided, or its importance is dwarfed. 

If any words of mine can have value in the con- 
test now opening, those words must relate to the 
issue I thus foreshadow. 

The questions which I now treat as relatively 
unimportant would be worthy of earnest public 
consideration in ordinary times; but the grave 
question — the gravest of all questions — now is. 
Shall this Government be destroyed or subverted perina- 
7iently by the usurpations of a minority ? 

It may be unpleasant to revive recollections of 
the war, but the war itself is intimately connected 



222 GENERAL GRANT. 

with recent events which have all the ear-marks of 
a powerful and continuing- conspiracy. By the 
prosecution of the war, or as resulting from its 
successful issue, the Union was saved, slavery was 
destroyed, the blacks were enfranchised, the repre-. 
sentative power of the old slave States was in- 
creased, and all by the efforts and concessions of the 
Republican party. More than this : By the magna- 
nimity of the same party the authors and leaders of 
the rebellion were not only relieved from the pun- 
ishment, and the peril of punishment, due to their 
crimes, but they were restored to their temporal pos- 
sessions, and, with few exceptions, to all their polit- 
ical rights. How has this magnanimity been re- 
paid ? By the seizure of State after State through 
bloody scenes of crime and by criminal processes 
of fraud. Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Missis- 
sippi, and South Carolina have been subjugated to 
the Democratic party, by the perpetration of the 
basest of crimes. Power thus acquired in those 
States is perpetuated in the hands of an armed 
minority by the continual practice of frauds which 
the majority, intimidated by the recollection of the 
bloody past, dare not either resist or expose. The 
conspirators, encouraged by their successes in the 
old slave States, and warned by the accumulating 
evidences of an adverse public sentiment in the 
North, sought, in their desperation, to render their 



THIRD TERM, 223 

supremacy absolute by the fraudulent seizure of 
the always free and intelligent State of Maine. 
There they have met their first defeat, but the pro- 
cesses employed connect the conspiracy in Maine 
and the conspiracy of the South with as much cer- 
tainty as we connect the drifting icebergs of the 
Atlantic with the frozen seas of the North. 

The patriotic men of the country are thus 
brought face to face with a great conspiracy which 
embraces the entire republic within the theatre of 
its operations. The central force of that conspiracy 
is the old slave powder. Its purpose is to subju- 
gate the Government to the ideas and policy of 
the slaveholding class. The chief means by which 
this policy can be made successful is the entire 
suppression of the negro vote in the fifteen old 
slave States. For the time this has been accom- 
plished, and the result is seen in a Democratic Sen- 
ate and a Democratic House of Representatives. 
Shall the presidency also be filled by a Democrat, 
and by the same means ? 

This conspiracy is within the Democratic party, 
and the Democratic party is its ally. It is, there- 
fore, quite unimportant to inquire whether the con- 
spiracy embrace the entire party or not ; it is 
enough that the party is subservient to the con- 
spiracy. The conspiracy triumphs when the party 
succeeds. The volumes of testimony taken in 



224 



GENERAL GRANT. 



Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Georgia, 
Alabama, and South Carolina prove the existence 
of the conspiracy. They prove, also, that its 
agents were sometimes White-Leaguers, sometimes 
Ku-klux, and sometimes Regulators, but that their 
acts and policy were always the same. As the con- 
spiracy operates within and gives direction to the 
Democratic party, it is manifest that the Republi- 
can party is the only political organization which 
has either the disposition or the ability to change 
the course of events. And it must be admitted 
that the Republican party enters the contest defy- 
ing a conspiracy which is already triumphant in 
the South. Of the fifteen old slave States it has 
usurped power in six, and suppressed freedom of 
political action in all the rest. A free vote and an 
honest count would insure the election of a Repub- 
lican President and majorities in the Senate and 
House of Representatives. This vote can not be 
had, and the Republican party of the North is 
thereby deprived of the aid of its natural and trust- 
worth}' allies in the South. The conspiracy has 
made the South a unit, and the sole reliance of the 
Republican party is upon the North. In this exi- 
gency that party must nominate a candidate who 
can command an election, and who, when elected, 
will possess abiUty and courage to meet and master 
the difficulties that are sure to confront him. As it 



THIRD TERM, 225 

was certain in i860 that the controlling force in the 
Democratic party contemplated rebellion, so now in 
1880, it is as certain that the controlling force in the 
Democratic party contemplates the inauguration of 
the candidate of that party, whether he is or is not 
duly elected. The gravity of this contest can not 
be exaggerated. We know beforehand that the 
election of the Democratic candidate by honest 
means is an impossibility ; and yet the declaration 
of his election by the House and the Senate can be 
averted only by a victory on the part of the Re- 
publicans so decisive as to leave no ground for 
criticism or claim. Such claim is least likely to be 
made when the Repubhcan party is under the lead 
of General Grant. General Grant is a man of 
peace ; but his capacity and firmness in defense of 
the rights and liberties of his country have been so 
often tested in great exigencies, that no further 
evidence is required either by friends or enemies. 

If it be conceded that the States of the South, 
where the conspirators have usurped the govern- 
ments and suppressed the ballot, are to be counted 
for the Democratic candidate, then the entire bur- 
den of the contest is thrown upon the State of 
New York. Without New York the Republican 
party can not succeed ; with New York the Re- 
publican party is sure of success. 

The State of New York, in its position, in its 



226 GENERAL GRANT, 

population, in its intelligence, in its industries, in its 
wealth, is the representative American State. The 
RepubUcans of that State, appreciating the solem- 
nity of the crisis and the importance of their posi- 
tion, have declared their purpose to support Gen- 
eral Grant for the presidency. 

This purpose has not been formed hastily, nor 
has the expression of it been secured by extraordi- 
nary means. Something may be due to leadership, 
but men in masses do not change their opinions at 
the dictation of leaders. I place Mr. Conkling 
among the first of American statesmen, but I 
should do great injustice to his constituents if I as- 
serted or admitted that they advocate or accept 
the nomination of General Grant under the influ- 
ence of his lead. Indeed, not only in New York, 
but throughout the entire North, the voters, the 
rank and file of the party, as they are often desig- 
nated, are more uniformly in favor of General 
Grant than are the leaders. 

They feel, they know, indeed, that every im- 
portant pubHc interest will be safe in his hands. If 
the industry of the country can be promoted, he is 
its friend. If the public credit is assailed, he will 
stand in its defense. If a dishonest financial policy 
is proposed, he will not hesitate to resist it. If the 
lawful authority of the national Government is dis- 
puted, he will marshal and use all the resources of 



THIRD TERM. 227 

that Government for the maintenance of that au- 
thority. And if the constitutional rights of citi- 
zens are invaded, he will employ every constitu- 
tional power for their protection. No doubt other 
persons proposed as candidates might act in these 
matters precisely as General Grant would act, but 
there is no one of them all who can command as 
great a following. Beyond all others, he repre- 
sents the military spirit and the patriotic sentiment 
of the country. Almost to the exclusion of every 
other, his name is known and revered by the col- 
ored men of the South. It may not be possible to 
redeem a single State from the domination of mill- 
tary rule, but something will be gained if the vic- 
tims of the usurpation are led to make one serious 
effort more in defense of their rights. On the 
other hand, the violators of law in the South fear 
General Grant more than they fear any one else. 
To them he is the representative of that power by 
which the rebellion was overthrown, the Union re- 
established, and slavery abolished. His mastery 
over great difficulties in the past has taught them 
the important lesson that he will confront with con- 
fidence such difficulties as may arise in the future. 
To the friends of law and order the nomination 
of Geiieral Grant is the best security that can now 
be had for peace and quiet ; to the enemies of law 
and order his nomination means the exercise of 



228 GENERAL GRANT, 

power and the administration of justice. Of this 
they may be assured. 

Most men who have been advanced to places of 
honor and trust have been charged with ambition. 
General Grant has not escaped the charge. The 
ambition to acquire the faculty of honorably serv- 
ing the public is a virtue ; the ambition to rise to 
power by the overthrow of the public liberties is 
a crime. General Grant may fairly claim the vir- 
tue, and the suggestion that the crime can be laid 
at his door is but the grossest calumny. In a pub- 
lic experience of nearly forty years I have known 
something of public men, and among them all I 
can not recall one who gave more careful attention 
to every subject within the sphere of his duty. 

It may not be possible for any man to give 
such assurances of fidelity to his country as to dis- 
arm criticism and suppress the spirit of malignity. 
General Grant has done all that it was possible for 
him to do, and no one has done more. He entered 
the service early in the war, and without regard to 
rank or position. He, was never advanced upon 
his own solicitation. He gave everything he had, 
including the hazard of his life, to the service of 
his country. He was placed at the head of our 
armies by President Lincoln, and at the head of 
our armies he brought the war to a conclusion. 
When the hour of victory came he was the trusted 



THIRD TERM. 229 

leader of a million enthusiastic, trained, veteran 
warriors, and first of all he suggested and earnest- 
ly urged the disbandment of this immense force, 
and their speedy return to the arts and pursuits of 
peace. Now, in private life, crowned with every 
honor which his own or other lands can confer, he 
neither seeks nor shuns further public service. In 
the contest going on he takes no part. If by the 
unsolicited votes of his countrymen he is again 
called to the presidency, there ought not to be 
even one citizen base enough to suggest that he is 
animated by any purpose inconsistent with the 
constitutional requirements of the office. 

This article is already burdened with the per- 
sonality of the writer, but, as the evil can not now 
be remedied, I venture to increase it. 

My relations to General Grant are those of sin- 
cere friendship ; but, aside from that friendship, I 
recognize no personal obligation binding me to 
him. When he tendered me a place in his Cabi- 
net, I declined it definitively ; and it was only when, 
in peculiar circumstances, a further refusal seemed 
wholly inconsistent with my duty as a citizen and 
as a supporter of the Administration, that I ac- 
cepted office. My position was an independent 
one, and I can now pass judgment upon General 
Grant with entire freedom. Pending the election 
in November last, I spoke at Bunker Hill ; and 



230 GENERAL GRANT, 

what I then said concerning General Grant I now 
repeat : 

" For the first time since General Grant left the 
office of President, I speak his name in public, and 
I do so now because I notice that many persons, 
from whom I did not expect so early a recognition 
of his character and services, have announced that 
they are disposed to support him for the presi- 
dency in 1880, or indicated the opinion that they 
expect his nomination and election. I may say, 
without assuming anything, that I have enjoyed 
the friendship of General Grant for many years, 
and I am not anxious that he should be again 
President of the United States. But I foresee that 
he is likely to be President. I do not know that 
the purpose to elect him is universal, but it appears 
to be very strong among the members of the Re- 
publican party, and I am disposed to see why it is 
that they look to General Grant. The instincts of 
great bodies of men usually have some good foun- 
dation, especially when the public sentiment runs 
for a long time in one direction, and there is no 
apparent moving force to the current. General 
Grant has been around the world. He has been in 
all the principal countries of Europe and of Asia, 
and if in those countries severally there has been 
one person, the ruler perhaps, who has been esti- 
mated as a more important personage than General 



THIRD TERM. 23 1 

Grant, it appears to be but a repetition of what oc- 
curred in Greece when a vote was taken among 
the commanders upon the question who was first 
and who was second. Each officer voted for him- 
self first, and Themistocles second. If you con- 
sider General Grant's career, it is not too much to 
say that, in a military point of view, he is among 
the first six men of whom history has preserved 
any account ; and if in future ages there shall be 
those who claim for him the first place, it will not 
be an extraordinary thing. Do you consider that 
he commanded more men for a period of fifteen 
months than were ever under the command of any 
other general in ancient or modern times since the 
days of Xerxes? That the theatre of his opera- 
tions was as large as the entire scope of Napoleon's 
campaigns from Egypt to Russia? That he never 
received a suggestion or an order from a superior 
in office after he became Lieutenant-General of the 
Army? That he never held a council of war? 
That he conducted operations at the same time up 
and down the Mississippi River, across the conti- 
nent, along the coast from Annapolis to Galveston, 
and penetrated the Confederacy at two or three 
points at the same time ? That never, never in the 
field, where he was in command personally, w^ere 
the troops under his orders routed, though they 
were often shattered and afflicted by the severities 



232 GENERAL GRANT, 

of the enemy's attacks? That they were never 
disheartened, discouraged, or demoralized, and 
that he brought to a successful conclusion the 
greatest war of modern times? Is it strange, 
then, that in all countries, even when stripped 
of the dignities of oflfice and the formalities of 
power, he everywhere has been recognized as 
the first personage on the surface of the earth ? 
Under these circumstances, is it strange that the 
Republican party of this country turns to him ? I 
have said this of General Grant, not because I want 
him nominated for the presidency. I think it has 
responsibilities from which he may well shrink. I 
do not know that an election will add to his fame. 
I am sure it will not increase his happiness. But 
there have been times when even in Massachusetts, 
and in Republican assemblies, it was not easy to 
represent General Grant as he is — a man of imper- 
turbable spirit, full of patriotism, animated by a 
plain and loving sense of justice, and anxious — 
more anxious, perhaps, than any other American 
citizen — for the perpetuity of our institutions, for 
the preservation of our national honor, and for 
the glory and prosperity of his country." 



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